Florida and California have taken dramatically different approaches to dealing with the spread of coronavirus, but both states have seen key metrics improved in recent weeks.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has imposed stricter rules and, more recently, demanded a statewide home stay order on Dec. 3 that lasted through the holiday season.
The order, which was lifted on January 25, went so far as to ban outdoor food, beauty services and religious services.
Instead, measures were taken at Sunshine State to ensure that companies remained open.
The Ron DeSantis government in September prevented local municipalities from implementing restrictions that would force restaurants and bars to operate at less than half capacity.
He also signed an executive order preventing companies from facing fines for challenging COVID-19-related orders.
DeSantis argued Sunday that the state “was focused on lifting people up,” while “closing states” are “leaving people out of business.”
“There’s a lot of stuff we’ve been doing for COVID, but at the same time, we’ve raised our status, we’ve saved our economy and I think we’ll be the first to come out the door once we’re able to put COVID behind the country, “she told Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures.
But despite the different approaches of the two states this winter, they have yielded similar results.
Both states faced an increase in cases around Jan. 1, with a downward trend in the number of infections a few weeks later.
Both now see an average of 200 to 400 cases per million people and have reported falls in recent days, according to the COVID monitoring project.
Similarly, both states have also seen improvement with hospitalizations.
About a month ago, California reported a rate of 56 hospitalizations per 100,000 residents, while Florida had a rate of 35, according to the data.
Golden State now records 24 hospitalizations per 100,000 people, while Florida has reported about 22, according to the data.
California currently leads the nation in the total number of cases, but has nearly twice as many Florida residents.
When the cases fit the population, their count is roughly the same.
California has about 8,822 cases per 100,000 people, while Florida has about 8,508 for the same population, according to the data.