It’s Official: Miami-Dade County Is Lifting Its Nightly Curfew on April 12

After being under a nightly curfew for almost a year since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Miami-Dade County will lift its midnight curfew beginning Monday, April 12, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava announced in a press conference earlier today.

Levine Cava says her team looked at all of the available data — including positivity rates, hospitalizations, and death rates, alongside new Centers for Disease Control guidelines — in order to make the decision to lift the curfew. Miami-Dade is the only county in the state of Florida that still has a nightly curfew on non-essential businesses, restaurants, and bars.

While the two-week positivity rate for the county is at 6.4 percent — not the 5.5 percent benchmark Levine Cava announced she wanted weeks ago before lifting the curfew — the mayor says that the increase in vaccinations and decrease in severe cases and hospitalizations led to the decision for the curfew to be lifted. The county’s chief medical officer, Dr. Peter Paige, also noted that the positivity rate may be higher due to the increased activity in the county over the past few weeks because of spring break.

Levine Cava also announced that she would be streamlining the county’s New Normal guidelines that were introduced by her predecessor Carlos Gimenez last summer. The detailed memo will now be more focused on mask wearing, social distancing, and hand washing measures.

As of today, any person aged 16 and up is eligible for a COIVD-19 vaccine in Miami-Dade County, another factor that county leadership will help bring down cases. So far, more than 790,000 people have received either their first or second vaccine in the county of close to 2.7 million residents.

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