After Miami-Dade County has been under night curfew for almost a year since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the curfew will be lifted at midnight on Monday April 12, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava announced in a press conference today.

According to Levine Cava, her team looked at all of the data available – including positivity rates, hospital stays, and death rates new guidelines for centers for disease control – 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 shops, restaurants, and bars.

While the two-week positivity rate for the county is 6.4 percent – not that 5.5 percent benchmark Levine Cava announced weeks ago that she would lift the curfew – the mayor said the increase in vaccinations and the decrease in severe cases and hospital stays led to the decision to lift the curfew. The chief physician of the district, Dr. Peter Paige also noted that the positivity rate could be higher due to the increased activity in the county in recent weeks due to the spring break.

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

From today, Everyone aged 16 and over is entitled to a COIVD-19 vaccine in Miami-Dade County, another factor the district leadership will help clear cases. So far more than 790,000 people received either their first or second vaccine in the county of nearly 2.7 million residents.