Every week, members of the Hillsborough County Emergency Policy Group meet on Mondays and Thursdays to discuss the current status of COVID-19 in the community and to implement courses of action to help keep local residents safe.
The scheduled meeting on Monday dealt with several influential topics and set the stage for further changes to come. According to the Florida Department of Health, Florida has 14,747 confirmed cases of COVID-19 from both in-state residents and non-residents who tested positive while inside Florida’s borders. There have also been 296 deaths in Florida from the virus as of press time.
Monitoring the spread locally has been a major focus of the group and the latest numbers indicate Hillsborough County’s rate is now doubling every five days. As of 11:30 a.m. April 7, the county had 597 cases in ages ranging from 0 to 93 years old. Approximately 90 have been hospitalized and an update on April 8 found eight people have died from COVID-19.
The growth of COVID-19 in the community has led to a surge of calls to the county’s call center, which schedules appointments to the drive-through testing facility at Raymond James Stadium. During Monday’s meeting, Emergency Management Director Tim Dudley announced the county received 7,744 additional collection kits for the site.
Raymond James is averaging anywhere from 300 to 400 collections a day and slots fill up within a matter of days. On Monday alone there were 311 appointments scheduled and Friday saw a total of 367 samples collected.
The alternate care sites set up by the county officially have residents, as well. As of Monday there were six guests in isolation at one site and one guest in quarantine at the other.
One of the recommendations to come from the EPG was for all local residents to begin wearing masks when they leave their homes. Some masks are still available online. The CDC has easy-to-understand designs for those who wish to make their own masks at home and there are countless social media posts and videos emerging with “how-to” videos using materials most people already have in their homes.
The Florida Department of Health heavily supported the suggestion and Dr. Douglas Holt, director of the department for Hillsborough County, said he was relieved to see a large percentage of people already acting with that precaution over the past weekend.
“What masks are designed to do under this situation is for those people who are asymptomatic to reduce the spread,” Holt said. “So it’s almost like having a continual sleeve on your nose if you’re coughing… There is still a little risk with your hands and picking something up and then touching your mask, so be mindful of that.”
While the suggestion is not yet required, it is strongly urged and can only benefit the community at large if residents comply.
Another major discussion on Monday was the push from Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis for all local government agencies to fully comply with his Safer at Home directive. In his document, only essential services, essential businesses and essential personnel are permitted to remain open.
The details of what that entails is largely in line with the Federal CDC guidelines. The EPG discussed what this meant for the county and, essentially, if a business is not considered essential, it has to close its physical location to customers. They can still operate from home or remotely as long as they provide delivery of a product rather than have it available in a store.
Plant City Mayor Rick Lott later told the Observer they went through every business one by one and were able to legally determine it did not affect the majority of businesses in town. Those who were not essential have mostly already closed and others have shifted some of their focus to providing an essential service — like making hand sanitizer or working to aid the hospitals — so they also get to remain open.
If there is a business the EPG feels the governor has overlooked, they can formally submit a request to add said business to the essential business list.
Lott also mentioned to the group that he wished to have a presentation on the effect of isolation on the community’s mental health sometime soon.
“A concern I have is we are starting to see a spike in our community in the number of people that are being Baker Acted, and I would like to ask if someone can give us a report on our social services and our communities’ mental health as a whole right now,” Lott said. “I think we all know that even though isolation and distancing is good for this virus, it does have an impact on other areas for the citizens in our community.”
The EPG, which is comprised of three county commissioners, the mayors from the cities of Plant City, Tampa and Temple Terrace, the sheriff and chairman of the school board, said it has received an onslaught of messages and calls from newly unemployed residents who said they have been alerted their rents will soon go up.
EPG chair Les Miller asked members of the EPG to send a letter to DeSantis to ask him to look into putting a stop to that in whatever method the government can. With the spread of COVID-19 leading to many residents being let go from their jobs, rising rent is something the entire group hopes to prevent.