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Hospitals Support Reopening Local Beaches With Conditions
April 22, 2020
Local hospitals support the limited reopening of local beaches, Baptist Hospital CEO Mark Faulkner said Wednesday morning. He offered little insight into the conditions.
Faulkner said the CEOs of the major hospital in Escambia County will send a letter to the county commissions in Escambia and Santa Rosa county supporting the opening of beaches “with conditions”.
He said limiting the hours for the beach opening to just a few hours per day would lead to larger crowds at one time as opposed to a sunrise to sunset opening.
“When you are at the beach, it is a fairly low risk, low contact ” he said, “whereas at a setting of worship, or at a school, or a prison, where you have different constraints, it’s hard to just say we can open everything back up. We would certainly see a second wave.”
Santa Rosa County will vote on their beaches on Thursday, while Escambia County meets next Tuesday.
Faulkner’s comments came during a virtual “Coffee With A Commissioner” event hosted by District 1 Commissioner Jeff Bergosh.
Pictured: (from top left, clockwide) Baptist CEO Mark Faulkner, Commissioner Jeff Bergosh, County Administrator Janice Gilley, Emergency Manager Eric Gilmore during a virtual “Coffee With A Commissioner” event Wednesday morning.
Comments
30 Responses to “Hospitals Support Reopening Local Beaches With Conditions”
Chris. If you think traffic is bad now, wait until this blows over!!!!! You gonna remember how JACKED up our traffic dept has everything.
If the beaches are to be reopened, people should still do the social distancing. I think having it open for only a few hours then closing, then opening for a few more hours is ridiculous. That idea will cause more problems with traffic and crowds…Everyone will be trying to get to the beach, because it’s only going to be open for a short time. If it were open as normal, people would come and go at their own time schedule.
When it reopens , that means there has to be public restrooms available. Then all the out of towners come Rollin up in the place . Then the virus rapidly expands to hundreds of folks. So go ahead and try it. I’ll sit back eat popcorn and pray for all who get sick from it to heal. Social distancing will be needed more than ever once this is implemented.
THEY SHOULD HAVE TO KEEP RECORDS OF DRIVER LICENSE ON EVERY ADULT GOING TO THE BEACH AND SEE IF THIS WAS A MISTAKE OR NOT. I ASK ALL MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS NOT TO GO S2TAY HOME AND BE SAFE.
Its not about you not going to the beach- its about the virus spreading amongst those who go – who then spread it to 10 people and they spread to 10 more people and so on and so forth – most of the city and county could have a serious problem in 30 days. I don’t understand why this is so difficult to understand.
I have been in East Africa and can tell you what epidemics do and how fast they can spin out of control – and this is 10 times for contagious than the flu!
Im not a gloom and doom person – but this could become very dangerous for us all here very quickly !
Of course. More business for them.
You people with you “open our beaches” cry baby crap crack me up. Your beaches are opening. You’ve been denied your “rights” for a whopping 4 weeks while people around you are sick, dying, denied unemployment, had their utilities shut off and even been evicted. Our elderly are dead in the dang nursing home on university pkwy, but your crying like titty babies because your “freedoms” are curtailed and you need to stage a protest. They’re not opening the beach for you, you bunch of rednecks. It’s tourist season. They’re opening the beaches for the tourists.the Baptist guy is just saying limited hours is better to control the civid-19 spread. Your beaches will be open, so quick the ridiculous bellyaching already, you sound ridiculous and you make this area look really, really shallow pool.
Have any health officials or police been to the bluffs on Scenic Hwy? Massive amount of cars and people there in a much more confined space than the beach. Are those people getting fined? Seems like the party mentality cannot be stopped!
Dont need any government, or organization,or person who is not an EXPERT on this contagion telling me anything..if you dont know keep your =/_< mouth shut….guess what…no one knows squat about this virus…there is and are not experts on this virus
It’s interesting we wonder why hospitals would be involved. I guess the POTUS should get rid of all those medical experts and just let it run it’s course. Of course,
we’d be back here wondering why hospitals aren’t helping us to fight this disease
and treat people. It’s like a parent telling you not to play with matches, knowing
if you do, they’ll be responsible for taking care of you. It doesn’t look like our
C- social distancing class took any biology courses in school.
You wonder why hospitals should be involved. Why should POTUS have all of the medical experts? We should just let it run it’s course and see how many will then be in need of “hospital” care. Our “C-” class must have missed biology in school.
My wife and i love to sit on the beach and watch the sun go down. Please tell me how that puts anybody at risk. So. The present mentality is if you go to the beach you gotta keep moving. Agzin, tell me how that is dangerous while the Walmarts and DG’s are full.
Whoever made the decision to close the beaches should be the authority to give the order to reopen. If they don’t have reopening authority then they should not order it closed. CEOs of businesses should not be authority…. only an endorsement. To much B.S. about all this.
I didn’t know that hospitals make the rules these days on how we live our lives or where we can go or can’t go. The last I looked they’re in the medical business, not my business. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of being treated like a child. You can sit at home but I go where I want when I want.
GET BUSY LIVING OR GET BUSY DYING! !!!
This is about hotel interests. The letter by the hospital CEO is inaccurate describing the situation in Escambia. This is foolish. Sure open some medical procedures but not the tourism industry.
Just come to Mcdavid beach.
Open the beaches for a few hours each morning and a few hours each evening and limit the use to active exercise purposes only such as walking, jogging, swimming, paddling, surfing and perhaps fishing. Chairs, umbrellas or otherwise setting up on the beach would be prohibited. I would likewise expect that bathroom facilities would remain closed. If we limit beach access to our respective county residents only and have our law enforcement officers enforce that, I believe this might work,
Open them up! If you feel it is unsafe then don’t go, simple.
Makes you wonder what all the local hospitals have in common with PBeach…..money money money money (like the song). With elective surgeries on hold business might be down. What better way for economic stimulation! Letting John Q. Public follow the social distancing rules, yeah right! An instant profitable business model unless they treat cov19 infectees free. Uh huh…… I wonder how well social distancing will work on Memorial Day weekend at cash cow PBeach?
sure I favor opening the beachs
from sun rise to sun set,beside I
am sure we would have our’s firest
tourist drowning………………..
FREEDOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m confused. It says the local hospitals agree that the beach should open but I only see the CEO of Baptist making this statement. Are the staff in agreement? They are on the front line. Not sure how this will work, believe it may end up looking like the large gathering at Easter. Are the other two hospitals on board with this?
Just drove to Pensacola to get some meds and it really seamed to business as usual there is a lot of traffic on the roads.
Good luck with that……I can promise you I will not be going to the beaches anytime soon until this thing has flattened out . If you have to open them up then I would do 6-9 in the morning and then 4-7 in the evening, only for walking (No sunbathing or laying out) and people must maintain the seperation and wear a mask and then if they dont, fine them $100 dollars for every violation. That should raise a few bucks for our money hungry county government.
Distancing on the beaches can be accomplished tempered with common sense, but there are many that have none of that, case in point I went to the farmers market the other day, it was crowded.
Along with myself there were people wearing masks, however there were plenty of people that weren’t. 6 ft. distancing in there was hard to achieve.
Those that did not wear masks says two things – they don’t much care about their own safety, and they don’t care about other people.
This covid 19 continues to devastate families in every state both in the loss of life and economic impact.
There are no easy answers for this pandemic, but one thing for sure folks are going to have use common sense to protect themselves whenever restrictions are eased to open up businesses and people start returning to work. All, stay safe out there, protect yourselves and your loved ones
Could the increase in positive cases be due to testing done weeks ago and just now getting results? And how many have been cured since April 3rd
The cure is worse than the disease! Get them open!
Today in Escambia County, Florida there are 340 cases of COV-19. From April 3rd to today there have been 10 deaths. I think it is to early to open, but I do understand the struggle that businesses are having. We are on lock down and it stinks, however, I do not want to be added to the number of cases or deaths.
Is it possible the increase stemmed from the large Easter Community Picnic on the West Side? Everyone is in agreement to continue banning mass gatherings, keep social distances, (mask wearing if that’s not possible ) etc.
There will always be idiots – but if we wait until they catch on – there will be nothing left to salvage
This concerns me greatly. First of all is a Hospital CEO a medical expert? And we just saw an increase in cases yesterday to today of 78 and the prior days before that increases greater than usual. It does not seem like we are on a downslope in Escambia county, rather a peak is still coming. Seems like we shouldn’t be talking about this yet.