MIAMI – Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez said Tuesday Gov. Ron DeSantis supports the plan to reopen some non-essential businesses on Monday, but the guidelines to slow the coronavirus’ spread are still in the works.
The list of businesses includes restaurants, hair and nail salons, retail stores, factories, and warehouses. Gimenez said the reopening of beaches is not included in this phase.
“You’re going to be wearing masks. You’re going to have separation. There’s going to be capacity limitations on businesses,” Gimenez said at a food distribution event Tuesday outside of Marlins Park in Little Havana.
Gimenez said he expects more Miami-Dade residents to test positive for the contagious respiratory illness as testing increases during the reopening process. He said Miami-Dade’s hospital capacity is sufficient.
“I look at how many people are in the hospital, how many people need ventilators, what’s the capacity of our health system to cover,” Gimenez said. “We have well over 3,000 empty hospital room beds. We have over 900 empty ventilators.”
Gimenez said the guidelines should be available to the public within the next couple of days. County officials will be coordinating efforts with Broward County and Miami-Dade municipalities.