Miami mayor asks residents to wear face masks at home

A Florida mayor advised residents to wear face masks at home to try to reduce coronavirus transmission between family members.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez (R) is urging residents to wear a mask inside their house because COVID-19 spreading among families is reportedly the most common type of transmission.

"Our messaging has always been, if you're outside or if you're indoors you need to wear a mask and you need to socially distance," Suarez said on Thursday during a COVID-19 press briefing.

"I would tell our residents — and this is voluntary, this is not something that we can mandate — that they should consider, particularly if they have a multigenerational household, wearing masks indoors, at times, with their multigenerational residents and also respecting social distance when they're at home," he added. "Because again we're seeing the largest center of spread being our house."

"The mask in public rule is working: we went from a high point of 125 new cases a day. We are now at 20 new cases a day," Suarez said. "The curve is flattening."

Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez (R) encouraged residents to practice proper social distancing in their own homes with their families.

"Something that I want to stress to is that, even inside the house, even inside your home, because we have such a high level of positivity rate here in Miami-Dade, you also need to start thinking about maintaining a distance also from your loved ones for a while," Gimenez said during a press conference on Thursday. "Yes, I know It's a sacrifice, but do so because, again, just because it's your son or your daughter or your cousin or your mother or your father, doesn't mean they don't have [COVID-19]."

Miami-Dade County has over 101,000 coronavirus cases, more than doubling the next highest Florida county – Broward County. Miami-Dade County has 1,379 COVID-19 deaths, compared to 580 coronavirus deaths in Broward County. The majority of Florida's COVID-19 infections are in South Florida.

Florida has nearly 415,000 COVID-19 cases, which is the third-most in the United States, and 5,778 coronavirus deaths, which is eighth-most in the country.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) believes the state is headed in the right direction as far as the coronavirus pandemic.

"I would much rather be in a plateau than be in an escalation," DeSantis said on Thursday. "We clearly stabilized with the cases. We're definitely trending in a better direction. We're trending much better today than we were two weeks ago. I do think that we are going to head in a better direction here shortly."