Ron DeSantis | AP Photo Florida won’t close its beaches. Here’s exactly what DeSantis said about that.

TALLAHASSEE — As coronavirus fears grip the country, pictures of crowded Florida beaches are going viral. And Gov. Ron DeSantis is making no apologies.

The Republican governor has refused to give a statewide order to close the coasts even as Democrats — and CNN — sound the alarm.


Even his predecessor — Sen. Rick Scott, a fellow Republican — has weighed in, telling people to just get off the beach.

It’s irresponsible, the critics say, to keep beaches open during a pandemic that arrived just in time to greet Florida’s infamous spring breakers.

The whole dust-up might be overblown — Miami-Dade, Manatee, Sarasota and Okaloosa counties said Thursday that they’d close their beaches, joining Naples, Tampa, Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach. And other closures are likely to come.

But at a press conference Thursday, DeSantis stuck to his guns. In his own words, here’s what he said:

“We did an order, no gatherings on beaches, 10 or more. So what you’ve seen now is a lot of the sheriffs‘ departments have instituted protocols. I had the Brevard sheriff, he had his deputies on ATVs. They had a boat going down the coast and they’re telling people you’ve got to disperse. Cocoa Beach, major spring break destination, went down 70 percent since my order.

And so I think that’s a more prudent approach, to do social distancing. I just spoke to the U.S. surgeon general about it. Here’s the thing. They want you to social distance, of course. But they actually encourage people to get fresh air. They just don’t want you congregating in big groups. And so if you have a Floridian that goes and walks their dog, like a married couple on the beach, as long as you're not within six feet of each other, they view that as a healthy thing.

So I think it’s important to allow that if the local communities want to do it, to be able to do it.

We’re also in a situation where we have counties who have no community spread. We have some counties that don’t have a single positive test yet. And so, I don’t want to be in a situation where we’re diverting people unwittingly into activities that are going to be more dangerous for passing the virus.

But I’ve stood by every local community — Miami Beach, Fort Lauderdale — we’re backing them. [Miami-Dade] Mayor [Carlos] Gimenez just did it. That’s great if that’s good for them. But I also think we’re going to be in a situation where if people are able to go out and be spaced out — so, these are not spring [breakers].

These are our neighbors who may need to go out there, clear their head. Because a lot of people are on edge right now. And this is going to be obviously a physical challenge with the virus, but I think it’s really weighing on a lot of people.

And I just, I want the localities to have an outlet available if they think that that makes sense. But since I issued my directive, anybody who’s put that in place — spring break’s done. Any place to go for bars and all this — done. They don’t have a place to go.

But I would also say, what we’re finding is, when we did the universities, and we extended their time away for two weeks, we were thinking, don’t come back yet. Instead, they all went back, and they were drinking at the bars every night. So, then we shut the bars down. Well guess what they did then? They went to the fraternity houses and doing that.

And so, there’s certain things we can do, but I think as [emergency management Director] Jared [Moskowitz] said, you know, some of the folks just need to be responsible and heed the advice that people are [giving]. But that’s part of the thing.

So, with the order tomorrow, Palm Beach and Broward have asked that the beaches be included in that, so we’re going to do it. But the rest are required to do social distancing. And I can tell you, that has been effective where it has been implemented.

So, we’re going to ask the sheriff of Brevard to put out the best practices for the communities on that. And then this way, they can figure out and monitor how things are going. And they can make decisions.

If they want to be more stringent, of course you can be more stringent. But I think, when people put out some of these pictures that were at the beginning of the weekend when CDC’s guidance said 250 people is fine, time changed radically in 72 hours.

And so we’ve responded, a lot of local communities have responded. And so I think that that’s a prudent approach.

And it also recognizes that our state is vast, it’s very diverse. I mean, I can go from Pensacola to St. Louis in about the same time I can drive from Pensacola to Miami. I mean that’s just the reality of what we’re dealing with here.

But we will absolutely work with the locals to effectuate policy that they think makes sense and we’re going to do that tomorrow when we issue the order with the Broward and Palm Beach communities. And we’re happy to work with them. And as part of that order, what I think I want to do, is also delegate the local administrators the authority to tailor that as circumstances change, because I think this is a very dynamic situation.

I think that we get new information every day. This testing could give us new vital information that we need, and I think they want to have the freedom to be able to have the policies in place that are going to make the most sense.

But you’re going to see some fatigue on this mitigation in 10 days, two weeks. I mean you can mark my words on that. So, I think our policies tried to be: let’s do the social distancing in ways that will effectively halt the spread of the virus, but are also sustainable if this ends up going, you know, many weeks and many months. I hope it doesn’t. But I think we’ve got to prepare for that.”