California and Florida Took a Different Approach in Reopening: How They’re Faring With COVID-19

• As the pandemic seems to be on the decline in the United States, we looked at two states that had very different approaches to reopening.
• California has slowly been dropping restrictions on indoor eating and gatherings.
• Florida Gov. Ron De Santis lifted restrictions last fall, while California Gov. Gavin Newsom has favored a slower tiered approach.

More than 3,760,303 people in California have developed COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

While that is the highest number of cases reported in any state in the country, California is also the most populous state with about 40 million residents.

But because of growing rates of immunity, continued efforts to vaccinate, and other measures to stop the spread of the virus, California now has one of the lowest rates of new cases in the country.

California reported an average of 1,783 new cases a day over the past week. That’s 4.69 daily cases per 100,000 people in the state. Oklahoma is now the only state with a lower rate of new cases.

COVID-19 infection rates have also declined in other states since peaking this past winter.

Florida reported an average of 3,635 new cases a day this past week. That’s down 80 percent since early January. Still, Florida’s per-capita rate of new cases is nearly 3.75 times higher than that of California.

The states approached reopening very differently. Florida Gov. Ron De Santis began to fully reopen the state in the spring with zero limits on indoor dining. Earlier this month, he also lifted any locally imposed restrictions as well. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom favored a slower-tiered approach based on a county’s rate of infection and current COVID-19 case count. The method has sometimes been criticized as going too slowly.

Many factors may account for the disparity in cases according to experts. And there isn’t one simple answer, Emily Pond, MPH, a research data analyst at the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center in Baltimore, told Healthline.

“It’s very difficult to compare between states, just because the demographic composition is different,” Pond said. “Even within a state, it can be significantly different between regions.”