“Floridians, let’s roll up our sleeves, get our shot and get back to work” – Tampa Bay Times

The public health and economic challenges brought about by the coronavirus pandemic are testing our state’s resilience.

Over the next several months, it remains critical that we continue to mask up, social distance and observe the protocols that can keep one another safe and slow the spread of the virus.

New COVID-19 cases in Florida rose 26 percent to more than 90,000 cases last week with 13.1 percent of test results coming back positive, up from 9.1 percent the week before. A more contagious variant of COVID-19 also was detected for the first time in Florida last week. Even with businesses reopening, an estimated 651,000 Floridians — 6.4 percent of our work force — remained unemployed as of November. And, Florida’s economy is expected to contract by 2.4 percent year-over-year in 2020, according to a November estimate by the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Forecasting.

But there’s reason for hope, as we slowly roll out effective COVID-19 vaccines. It’s clear that vaccinating as large a portion of our population as possible will eventually end the pandemic and is the surest path to our state’s economic recovery. It’s especially important that Florida’s business community take the lead and assist our elected officials and public health community in this important endeavor.

Read the full article at the Tampa Bay Times.