Filled with students, Miami city hits emergency brakes

College students from several states have flooded the South Florida area for the annual spring break ritual. Pic/AFP

Miami Beach on Saturday declared a state of emergency over concern about a large number of spring breakers gathering in the city.

The new measures are ‘essentially purposed to reduce the number of people' coming to the area to combat Covid-19, said Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber during a news conference on Saturday, reported The Hill.

He also announced an 8 pm curfew in the Entertainment District and a restriction of east-bound traffic on city causeways, which will be available only to residents and hotel guests.

The measures went into effect at 9 pm ET (6:30 am IST) on Saturday (local time) and will remain for 72 hours.

Meanwhile, Gelber said he will hold an emergency meeting with the City Commission to address the measures to check the potential surge in COVID-19 cases, The Hill reported.

Miami Beach's interim City Manager Raul Aguila said Saturday that he's received emails from businesses that have voluntarily closed or don't want to open due to the crowds.

"As we hit the peak - at the peak of spring break, we are quite simply overwhelmed in the entertainment district… Folks, this is not an easy decision to make, we are doing that to protect the public health and safety," said Aguila.

Last week, the police had to disperse a crowd of about 200 "unruly" spring breakers, who had surrounded an intersection, with pepper balls.

The Miami Beach Police Department said at the time that several people were detained and two officers were injured.

As of Saturday morning, there have been at least 1,999,249 cases and 32,650 deaths in Florida since the beginning of the pandemic a year ago, according to a New York Times database. Over the past week, there has been an average of 4,485 cases per day, it reported.

Israel revokes curb on travel quotas
The Israeli government has cancelled the daily limit of 3,000 passengers entering the country while approving the new regulations on arrivals and departures from Ben-Gurion Airport during the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting Saturday at midnight there are no longer restrictions on the number of people allowed to enter the country while discontinuing the entry quotas system, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Protesters clash with German cops
As over 20,000 people took to the streets to oppose the anti-pandemic lockdown, protesters attacked several members of Germany's security forces in Kassel, according to authorities. Violent clashes between various groups of protesters were also reported, according to DW. "We will not tolerate such attacks... This is not what peaceful protests look like," the local police said on Twitter.

5,13,797
No. of new cases reported globally in the past 24 hours

12,29,64,412
Total no. of cases worldwide

27,12,137
Total no. of deaths worldwide

Source: WHO/Johns Hopkins

This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever