March 7 (UPI) — Florida health officials have announced the first two U.S. East Coast deaths from coronavirus as the governor there seeks $25 million in emergency funding to respond to the disease.
The Florida Department of Health announced late Friday that two people in their 70s who had traveled overseas died from COVID-19. One was from Santa Rosa County in the panhandle and the other from Lee County, on Florida’s west coast.
That brings the U.S. death toll from the disease to 16, according to figures from Johns Hopkins. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which last updated its figures Friday afternoon, reports 11 deaths.
Prior to Florida’s announcement, all U.S. deaths from the novel coronavirus had been contained to the West Coast, with 13 in Washington and one in California.
Johns Hopkins reported 340 confirmed cases of the virus in the United States as of Saturday morning, citing local and state health departments.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis requested $25 million in emergency funding from the state’s legislature to combat COVID-19. He declared a public health emergency earlier this month.
Meanwhile, a passenger on board the Grand Princess cruise ship off California told CNN that another passenger was airlifted off the quarantined vessel. Vice President Mike Pence announced Friday that 21 people on board the ship tested positive for the virus.
“The captain came on a few minutes ago with another announcement that a helicopter was just dispatched to the ship to drop off some supplies and to pick up a passenger who needed medical attention and they flew that person back to San Francisco,” passenger Steven Smith told CNN.
“They do not know what they’re going to do, where they’re going to have us berth. Right now we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” he added.
Pence said the plan was to dock the cruise ship at a non-commercial port, where some 3,500 passengers can be removed.
On Friday, President Donald Trump signed an $8.3 billion funding bill to tackle the coronavirus. Some of the money is earmarked for local officials on the front lines fighting the disease, while about $3 billion will go toward vaccine research.
