Approved ~~ MJM
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pointed to clusters of “overwhelmingly Hispanic” day laborers and agriculture workers driving the state’s recent coronavirus spike — but farmworkers and industry associations argue that resources and testing came too late to those communities, according to new reports.
The Republican governor told reporters Tuesday that cramped living and working conditions for migrant workers and Hispanic construction workers are partly to blame, according to WFOR-TV.
“Some of these guys go to work in a school bus, and they are all just packed there like sardines, going across Palm Beach County or some of these other places, and there’s all these opportunities to have transmission,” DeSantis said during a press conference in Tallahassee.
He pointed to cases in migrant camps, a watermelon farm and Immokalee, a major hub for tomato production, as evidence of the uptick.
But Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried argued that the majority of farmworkers left several weeks ago after harvests ended and that the real uptick is in non-agricultural areas, according to the Miami Herald.
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