Super Bowl LV was this past weekend and in the end Tampa Bay won the championship. It wasn’t all that was happening in town though, the Super Bowl brought celebrities and parties across the bay that have created fears of a superspreader event in Tampa.
Recent reports of the COVID-19 UK variant being found prevalent in Florida are concerning healthcare officials and the Biden Administration is threatening travel restrictions on the state.
CBS 12 reports: “Florida is leading the way in terms of one of the fastest rates of B117,” said Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist with the Federation of American Scientists. “The natural contagiousness of the B117 means that it will infect a lot of people.”
Nearly half a million or 500,000 Americans have died during the Coronavirus pandemic and over 26,000 Floridians. Throughout the course of the pandemic, Florida has been under the national microscopic from spring breakers telling people they don’t care about the pandemic to Governor DeSantis constantly fighting restrictions and acting like nothing is wrong.
The City of Tampa promised that there would be an effort to stop people from not wearing masks, but not one person was cited during the busy weekend according to Creative Loafing. Local police clearly said before that there would be “education” and not “enforcement” though.
There is evidence that travelers have curbed travel to Florida throughout the pandemic and the impact on businesses has been quite deep although it has been increasing in recent months. The emergence of the UK Variant in the state could be an emergency for local businesses if it leads to travel restrictions due to government mismanagement of the virus.
Here is a collection of videos from the weekend:
Carlos Eats 