Florida News Archive

The first wave of coronavirus vaccinations began in Florida on Monday, with health-care workers in Tampa and Jacksonville among the first to get inoculated.

TALLAHASSEE — Pointing to what they called “baseless” legal arguments, lawyers for Gov. Ron DeSantis have urged an appeals court to sanction a Northwest Florida attorney who filed a lawsuit to try to force DeSantis to close beaches to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

TALLAHASSEE — At this point, it seems almost like an afterthought.

Twenty-nine presidential electors will gather Monday in the state Senate chamber and formally put Florida in Republican President Donald Trump’s column.

A federal appeals court Friday rejected a lawsuit filed by current and former students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who alleged that Broward County officials had a “custodial” duty to protect them from the 2018 mass shooting at the Parkland school. A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower-court decision that sided with a series of defendants, including Broward County, Superintendent of Schools Robert Runcie, former Sheriff Scott Israel and former school-resource officer Scot Peterson.

TALLAHASSEE — State health-care agencies on Saturday released numbers about the coronavirus in Florida. Here are some takeaways:

— 1,116,973: Total number of cases since the pandemic started.

As the state approaches another morbid coronavirus milestone of 20,000 deaths, Gov. Ron DeSantis delivered some glad tidings to Floridians this week: Hope is on the horizon.

Florida is in line to receive nearly 180,000 doses of Pfizer Inc.’s COVID-19 vaccine as soon as federal health authorities sign off on the drug, with 81,900 doses slated to be used in long-term care facilities and the remainder going to five hospitals throughout the state.

But the news wasn’t all giddy for DeSantis and his administration this week.

A statewide grand jury studying school safety issued an interim report Thursday that tore into Florida’s mental-health system, saying that “deficiencies in funding, leadership and services related to mental health care tend to turn up everywhere like bad pennies.”

For the second time this week, the 1st District Court of Appeal on Thursday dismissed a challenge to a requirement that people wear masks in certain public places to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Saying drivers and delivery people have been a “lifeline to their communities,” Uber’s chief executive officer on Thursday asked Gov. Ron DeSantis to prioritize the COVID-19 vaccine for the online platform’s workers.

As the numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to climb, faculty members at a Northwest Florida college are challenging administrators’ decision to boost face-to-face instruction during the upcoming spring semester.