The clock is ticking: Farmworkers returning to Florida for the fall harvest season, students returning to school in Immokalee for in-person classes, combine to create fertile ground for a new COVID-19 outbreak;
State and county health officials must take immediate action, work with internationally-acclaimed Partners In Health to protect the Sunshine State’s essential workers!
Over the past several months, Florida became a global hotspot of the coronavirus pandemic, reaching record-breaking infection levels in early July that would have ranked the state 4th in the world for new coronavirus cases in a day if it were a country. The rural farmworker community of Immokalee contributed more than its fair share to this grim achievement: As of yesterday, there have been over 2,250 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Immokalee, surpassing totals in many of the state’s much larger coastal cities.
Sadly, farmworker leaders with the CIW predicted this outcome since the very onset of the pandemic in March. But despite having more than sufficient time to prepare for the onslaught, state and local health officials failed to adequately respond to the growing public health crisis, at both the state and Immokalee community levels. Florida and Collier County officials were slow to lock-down economic activity and late to implement widespread testing in Immokalee, allowing the virus to establish a secure foothold in the community. They then largely failed to build the kind of contact tracing and isolation systems necessary to locate and contain the virus, and were too quick to re-open economic activity, providing the virus fertile ground for its almost unchecked spread from May to July.
While the spread of the virus appears to have slowed somewhat since its peak in July, as thousands of farmworkers traveled north for the summer harvest and officials slowed testing schedules significantly, a second major outbreak in the months ahead remains a clear and present danger for the Immokalee community. With the fall harvest season fast-approaching, Immokalee’s population is set to double as thousands more essential workers return to town, and thousands of school-aged children are returning to in-person classes unsure of the dangers that lay ahead. A second perfect storm of contagion is brewing on the horizon, and we cannot afford to fail again.
