It’s Wednesday, April 7th - and NBC6 has the top stories for the day.
No. 1 - Broward commissioners voted Tuesday to relax some of the county's COVID-19 restrictions, which includes lifting some social distancing and capacity restrictions, as more people get vaccinated and cases go down.
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Commissioners agreed to lift restrictions on outdoor activities, such as ones at community/condo pools, golf courses and other outside activities where people aren't in close proximity or congregating. Further restrictions will be lifted as COVID-19 cases go down and more people are vaccinated, the county said. Mayor Steve Geller presented a plan that would reopen the county in three parts.
No. 2 - The city and Miami-Dade County will hold a vaccine event Wednesday at the Westland Gardens Park Banquet Facility located at 13501 Northwest 107th Avenue. The event runs begins at 8:30 a.m. while supplies last.
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A Florida ID or Florida driver’s license must be provided. Vaccinations will only be administered to individuals 18 years of age or older. A screening and consent form must be completed by all participants. For questions or concerns please contact 305-470-5660. Click here for a list of vaccination sites across Broward and Miami-Dade counties
No. 3 - Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his supporters are blasting the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes” this week over a segment Sunday on how the COVID-19 vaccine has been distributed in the state.
The segment questioned whether Publix was rewarded with vaccine distribution because of campaign contributions to DeSantis. But in doing so, a veteran journalist and educator says, they were lacking an important element: evidence the campaign contributions were connected to the vaccine distribution. To find out why this educator says the DeSantis campaign might have a point, click here for the story.
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No. 4 - Carnival Cruise Line "may have no choice" but to move its ships out of U.S. homeports to resume operations if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention don't lift the no-sail order put in place last year in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, company officials said.
The South Florida-based cruise line on Tuesday extended its pause of all operations out of U.S. ports through June 30. On Friday, the CDC updated its guidance to say that fully vaccinated people can travel within the U.S. without getting tested for the coronavirus or going into quarantine afterward. It also issued more technical details around its conditional plan to allow cruise ships in U.S. ports, but it did not say when cruise lines could resume sailing.
No. 5 - As Florida’s sugar harvest nears its end, it’s a bustling time in the fields and mills that produce hundreds of millions of dollars for Big Sugar, its contractors and employees.
Some of them are seasonal workers, non-citizens brought in by an industry that certifies to the government that no Americans are available to do the work they do. But one group of American truckers told NBC 6, in their case, that is Big Sugar’s big lie. Some of the workers say they invested more than $10,000 to get their trucks ready for the harvest season. Now, they allege in a lawsuit, U.S. Sugar and Caloosa Transport LLP were conspiring to defraud them by lying to them and the US government. For that story, click here for a report from NBC 6 Investigators reporter Tony Pipitone.
No. 6 - Who do you know who has had a cold in the past 12 months?
Anecdotally, many of us have noticed a big drop in the number of people coming down with colds or the flu, and it turns out, it’s not just observational, it’s real. Last year, the flu killed 188 children nationwide. This flu season, only one child has died from flu in the United States, and pediatricians are seeing this pandemic side effect in their offices. To find out why doctors say this is, click here for the story from NBC 6 reporter Ari Odzer.
