Miami Beach under curfew as spring breakers defy Covid orders

Miami Beach was under a curfew and a state of emergency after police fired pepper balls to disperse crowds of revellers who defied Covid safety guidelines on Saturday night.

Outdoor restaurant seating was suspended and roads were closed in parts of the city, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the US for annual “spring break” vacations. Defying the curfew, hundreds of people spilled into the Miami Beach streets late on Saturday night, prompting police to take aggressive action to break up the crowds.

“Quite frankly, I am concerned that the behaviour is getting more for us to be able to handle,” Miami Beach police chief Richard Clements said at a press conference on Saturday. “Everything that we are focusing on now is public safety.”

Miami Beach and other Florida cities had earlier reported throngs of tourists arriving for spring break, with students from more than 200 schools expected to crowd the state’s beaches.

Some US cities have moved to relax Covid requirements as the US steps up its vaccination efforts, sparking fears of a new wave of infections due to the spread of coronavirus variants.

Miami’s curfew came days after Florida governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, suggested the state would ease Covid-19 restrictions further. Last week, DeSantis issued an executive order waiving fines implemented by local governments over the past year for pandemic-related offences, going beyond any enforcement or Covid-19-related orders taken by the state.

DeSantis is considered a rising star in the Republican party, in part due to his handling of the pandemic. Florida has a big population of senior citizens who were not hit as hard by the pandemic as expected earlier in 2020.

“We are going in the right direction,” he said at a press conference on Thursday. “We are having no lockdowns. No mandates in Florida.”

Tourism is a major part of Florida’s economy, contributing billions of dollars in tax revenues. But the number of visitors dropped to 86.7m in 2020, down 34 per cent from a year earlier, according to state statistics. And hotel bookings remain down by about 25 per cent from 2019 as of late February.

Despite the increasing availability of Covid-19 vaccines across the country, people are still dying. On Saturday, New York governor Andrew Cuomo reported 62 deaths in the state. Arizona and Iowa reported 12 and two deaths, respectively, over the weekend, the Associated Press reported on Sunday.

Also on Saturday, New York reported the first case in a state resident of Covid-19 variant P.1, a type first detected in Brazil. The patient is from Brooklyn, aged over 90, with no travel history, Cuomo’s office said.

Florida reported no Covid-19 deaths on March 19, the most recent date available, down from 60 deaths reported on March 6. The state reported 5,040 cases on March 19, up from 4,070 on March 6.