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The private Insurance market is bracing for a mountain of claims ranging from workers compensation to business interruption, even though a pandemic is excluded from most policies.

The state and some local governments are now ordering some coverages anyway, raising the question of fairness.

Most business interruption policies exclude pandemics and require that there be physical damage to the businesses location to qualify, but at least one Florida county’s emergency order declares that the virus is causing physical damage to the business.

Experts like Chip Merlin, a Policy Holders Attorney, said if you have the coverage file now.

“The first duty that the owner of an insurance policy has it to report a loss. And they have to do that promptly, immediately, within a reasonable time after they are shut down,” said Merlin.

Insurance Consultant Lisa Miller offered the same advice.

“Even though you have language that clearly excludes it,” said Miller.

She believes the Federal Government will set up a fund to cover some business losses.

“There’s a thirty-some page proposed bill sitting in Congress right now that would set up a federal fund to pay these claims,” said Miller.

And people who think they got infected at work may be able to get help through Workers Comp insurance.

A state memo urges insurers to cover employees who get infected including first responders.

“Basically telling all carriers that they should advocate and consider doing this with their policies,” said Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis.

All those we spoke with said protecting your rights now is important.

“And when you start talking about probabilities and odds, who knows what’s going to happen with various state legislatures,” said Merlin.

In the end all of us are going to pick up the cost of this pandemic.

Either through higher taxes because of a government bailout, or because we fund a guarantee fund that bails out bankrupt insurance companies.

Insurance expert Lisa Miller believes the federal bailout fund for business interruption could be as much as $500 billion.

Florida’s Commissioner of Agriculture had launched a one-stop shop for Florida farmers to find customers and assistance amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The Keep Florida Growing webpage offers a platform for Floridians and businesses to find local farmers and ranchers they can purchase product from in order to help keep the state’s agriculture industry afloat.

The site also provides farmers with information on SBA loans, USDA assistance, and state emergency bridge loans.

“My guess is that agriculture has become the number one economic driver in our state and so we need to do everything we can to really lift up this industry and make sure that our economy can at least rely on agriculture during these hard times,” said Ag Commissioner Nikki Fried.

The page can be found by clicking here.

A major industrial printing company in the state’s capital city is finding a new purpose as health workers across the country struggle to find personal protective equipment.

Altrua Global Solutions makes signage for large companies like McDonalds, but after the coronavirus struck their signs shifted from promotional, to reminding people businesses were still open.

“For us, I felt like we were helping save some jobs out there,” said owner Melode Smelko.

Melode and her husband Skip soon discovered another way they could help.

“We also saw a couple YouTube videos of folks making masks and I said, that’s our machinery right there, the face shields that’s our machinery. We can do this,” said Melode.

Within 48 hours they had a prototype face shield.

A few days later, they’re now able to produce 1,000 a day.

They’ll soon have the capacity to produce a total of 12,000 face shields to be shipped across the country.

“And it was to help our team too. It’s like everybody else. Everybody’s kind of wondering what’s going to happen in their jobs and everything and this was just another way for us to be able to give back to our team saying, hey you’re here and we’re in good shape,” said Skip.

They’ve also imported 10,000 face masks to distribute.

Within the next few days they expect to produce thousands of face masks in shop, offsetting some reliance on foreign suppliers.

“There’s a lot of manufacturing in this country and obviously we can all switch over to do what we need to do,” said Melode.

And Altrua is still producing signs, giving out free ‘We’re Open’ signs to local restaurants and putting up signs across the community thanking first responders.

“Printing signs is easy for us and that’s something we can give back to make people feel good around our community,” said Melode.

While the face shields will be going to health workers, the face masks Altrua produces will be going to restaurants and other essential businesses to protect their employees.

$295 for a face mask, $70 for hand sanitizer and $38 for soap.

Those are just some of the products behind more than 2,700 contacts the Attorney Generals’s office has had with merchants over price gouging.

“We will not relent in these efforts to protect Floridians from gouging and COVID-19 related scams,” said Attorney General Ashley Moody.

Because of the nature of this emergency, much of the price gouging has been online, but the AG’s office has been able to deactivate more than 130 posts on multiple platforms.

But it’s not only price gouging.

Some employees appear to be panicking.

“He sprayed the Lysol in the air. She I guess sprayed the counter,” said Angelina Simmons.

Simmons contacted us over a $4.59 can of Lysol.

She told us she didn’t buy it, but was charged for it by a clerk of a major chain, who used the can to spray the counter top as she approached.

“It was just weird because the cashier was very nonchalant. There was no explanation. I would just assume that maybe she was like hey we have to charge you for this, but none of that,” said Simmons.

The chain apologized and told the Attorney General’s Office the charge was an error.

They have offered a refund.

We asked the Governor what the incident says about the concern the virus is invoking for those working the front lines.

“Just keep calm, carry on and let’s get through this,” said Governor Ron DeSantis.

Right now the state has 59 active subpoenas out looking for information on price gouging.

And merchants beware.

It can harm your business in more ways than one.

“I don’t think I will be back,” said Simmons.

So far, the Attorney General’s office says more than a $130,000 has been refunded as a result of complaints received by the office.

Governor Ron DeSantis said today Florida will soon be at one Coronavirus test for every one hundred and twenty residents. The state today has more than 18 thousand cases as of this morning, and  as Mike Vasilinda tells us, the number of new cases have been flat over the last few days.

The Department of Economic Opportunity has revamped its website, making it more user friendly and unveiling a way to apply for unemployment benefits from a mobile device, but the agency is still overwhelmed with claims.

The week began with 560,000 unemployment claims filed over a three week period.

One viewer emailed us that they were unable to enter multiple employers for the year on the mobile app.

We asked DEO spokesperson Tiffany Vause about it.

“We are looking into that issue. But that user should just go ahead and fill out the employer that they have. And then once they get uploaded into Connect, it we have more questions, a DEO representative will call them to finish out their claim,” said Vause.

Another viewer told us she was still being asked about whether she had made five attempts at finding a job this week.

“Floridians can just select no and it’s not going to prevent you from getting claims because the Governor has waived that requirement,” said Vause.

The Department said employees on loan from the Department of Revenue are dedicated to verifying the backlog of applications.

The Department told us some COVID-19 checks are being sent, but couldn’t say how many.

At $275 a week for 12 weeks, the benefits are among the lowest in the country.

Florida’s incoming Senate President told us if or when lawmakers come back, benefit levels will be revisited.

“Everything is going to be on the table. I think right now, our top concern is making sure people have what they need,” said Senator Wilton Simpson.

We also asked about retroactive benefits for people who couldn’t apply because of the website crashing.

The Department would say only that everyone will get what the benefits to which they are entitled.

If you are using a mobile device you can go to FloridaJobs.org/COVID-19 to file an unemployment claim.

Governor Ron DeSantis has signed his first round of bills into law since his focus shifted to COVID-19 response.

While the Governor had said he planned to delay any action on legislation unless it could be immediately helpful during the crisis, some of the bills he signed appear to have little relevance.

“If there’s something in that stack of bills that would be effective immediately that would help things that would be different,” said DeSantis.

The Governor has now reauthorized Visit Florida, the state’s tourism marketing agency, which could help the state recover when the crisis subsides.

He also approved $47 million in hurricane preparedness and back to school sales tax holidays, potential economic relief for some struggling Floridians.

But new restrictions on the citizen initiative process signed Wednesday have voter groups crying foul.

“While we’re all focused on keeping our families safe things like this are happening in the Governor’s Office,” said Aliki Moncrief with the Florida Conservation Voters.

Moncrief said COVID-19 already has many petition efforts on hold.

Now they’ll face shorter deadlines and higher signature requirements when they start collecting signatures again.

“It’s not only that they’re not going to help in this crisis, but they’re going to hurt in the long term Floridians’ ability, in the instance of the citizens’ initiative bill, Floridians’ ability to access our democracy,” said Moncrief.

The Governor also approved legal holiday fireworks, changes to the Florida Kidcare program, reauthorized the ABLE program and signed a public records exemption for law enforcement communication infrastructure locations.

Incoming Senate President Wilton Simpson defended the Governor, arguing he has to balance his duties.

“The Governor has to also be the Governor right? He has to, the legislation that we passed will either be signed or vetoed. The budgets that we put into place will be signed or vetoed,” said Simpson.

The Governor has also suggested the mandatory E-Verify bill passed this year could be one of the first signed, but so far he has not received it from the Legislature.

Invoking the words of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the dark days of World War II, Florida’s incoming Senate President Wilton Simpson, released a video Thursday morning contrasting the challenges it took to prevail in the 1940’s to what we are facing today.

“There is a lot of fear out there, but there are a lot of people on the front lines, everyday Floridians on the front lines, and all of our doctors and nurses, medical staff, and when you think about the farmers that are out there everyday to bring food, and the truck drivers and retailers and grocery stores, and all the workers who are associated with delivery services, I think this show some appreciate for what we are going through and we are going to be better,” said Simpson.

The video is being pushed out on social media.

Florida’s elections supervisors are asking the Governor for more days of early voting for both the August primary and the November general election

They also want more flexibility on mail in ballots.

Florida law mandates eight days of early voting, but it allows up to 15.

Now, Florida’s election supervisors are asking the Governor for a total of 22 early voting days.

Tammy Jones is the President of the Florida Association of Elections Supervisors.

“It’s gonna be harder to find poll workers and also election day voting locations. So therefore we asked that we can extend our early voting days up to another week of early voting,” said Jones.

The Supervisors also want more flexibility.

“Drop boxes at early voting sites. That’s now state law requires that. So, we’re looking at putting more permanent sites out there that would be manned, at more locations,” said Leon County Elections Supervisor Mark Earley.

The supervisors are also pushing mail in voting as the safest alternative to going to the polls, but caution they don’t have the capacity to run the entire election via mail.

“We encourage people to vote by mail. However, we do feel like Florida is not in a position to mandate all counties to vote by mail,” said Jones.

System capacity is at issue.

“We’re not going to be able to send a vote by mail ballot to everybody. There’s just not enough time to prepare for that. We don’t even have the tabulation machines in place. At least many counties don’t,” said Earley.

Supervisors also want an extra day to respond to mail ballot requests.

Current law says it must be mailed within two business days.

All those extra early voting days do come with a cost.

The supervisors don’t know much yet, but they plan to ask the state to pick up the tab.

And the supervisors want whatever is approved to apply to both August and November, so voters feel a sense of continuity.

Governor Ron DeSantis’ medical roundtable on COVID-19 focused heavily on the drug hydroxychloroquine, which is typically used to treat malaria, arthritis and lupus, but has been touted by the President as a possible treatment for the novel coronavirus.

A million doses of hydroxychloroquine are set to arrive in the state capital Wednesday and will be distributed throughout the state.

Governor Ron DeSantis shared a testimonial from an unnamed COVID-19 patient treated with the drug during his medical roundtable.

“You guys saved my life and you know you did,” the patient said in a prerecorded video.

“This really isn’t like the flu, I mean this is some really serious complications and it can go downhill very fast and so to be able to have a variety of options is very, very important,” said DeSantis.

Doctors joining the Governor agreed hydroxychloroquine is a beneficial tool to have on hand.

“It’s being tested, but we’re not sure whether it will work. Along with that we are using several other therapies,” said Dr. Sunil Kumar, a critical care and pulmonary physician at Broward Health.

The Governor’s hydroxychloroquine-focused roundtable earned him some critical headlines.

One outlet likened him to a pitchman for the medication.

But DeSantis did hammer the point that people should not self medicate with the drug.

“Is this something that someone should just be messing around with on their own?” DeSantis asked Dr. Carlos Campo with Tallahassee Memorial Hospital.

“I would not recommend just starting these as an outpatient because obviously patients cannot be monitored and again, the medications themselves can put the patient at risk,” said Campo.

And Dr. Kumar emphasized more research is needed.

“I think we need to continue with aggressive efforts to do a randomized control trial, which is being done,” said Kumar.

The main side effect of hydroxychloroquine highlighted during the panel was arrhythmia.

In a hospital setting doctors use an EKG to monitor patients being treated with the drug.

There are reports that diverting hydroxychloroquine to COVID-19 patients has made the drug harder to get for patients suffering from lupus and arthritis.

Farmers in Florida are plowing crops under because vegetables cost more to pick than they bring at market, and some fear they may transmit the coronavirus.

Toilet paper is being rationed, if its available at all.

Tuna and other can goods are scarce, but fresh fruits and vegetables are plentiful.

In part, because restaurants have stopped buying, but also because some fear they could transmit COVID-19.

“You know, you look at some bananas, it’s kind of a normal thing. And I think people are probably making some pretty good decisions because those are the kinds of contacts that could potentially make a difference,” said Governor Ron DeSantis.

But Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried argues fruits and vegetables are safe.

“There has been no transmission of COVID-19 from fruits or vegetables or any other type of produce,” said Fried.

Sam Accursio is a farmer in Homestead.

He’s not worried about Florida produce.

“What concerns me about buying food from third world countries is that they do not have the same regulations that we have here in the United States. With the environment, human rights, health concerns,” said Accursio.

Florida has more than 300 speciality crops and feeds most of the nation its fresh fruits and vegetables during the winter and early spring.

Fried said small farmers need the support.

“So we need to make sure that all of the money we are getting, the stimulus dollars, the money for our food banks, the money for our school lunch programs, that as much as that money stays here in Florida nd that they are buying fresh produce,” said Fried.

Under state law, grocery stores have to tell consumers where crops are grown and Fried said now, more than ever is the time to be eating Fresh From Florida.

“An apple a day,” said Fried.

Fried is encouraging people to cook and then freeze vegetables for a healthier alternative.

The Florida Supreme Court has ordered all jury trials in the state suspended until the June, extending a previous order by two months.

The potential for innocent people sitting in jail for an extended period of time has human rights groups and defense attorneys sounding the alarm.

Jury trials have been suspended in Florida due to hurricanes in the past, but Richard Greenberg with the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers said the now three-month delay for COVID-19 is different.

“People sitting in jail are very, very concerned… Every week it seems like the deadlines are being pushed back,” said Greenberg.

Normally, those charged with a misdemeanor have the right to a trial within 90 day and those with felony charges 175, but under the order those rights have been waived.

The concern from groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center… Innocent people could have to spend longer behind bars if they can’t make bail.

“And what I fear is going to happen is we’re going to see more people pleading guilty just to get out of jail. Not because they committed the crime, not because they don’t have a viable defense,” said Sumayya Saleh with the Southern Poverty Law Center.

There are also concerns of overcrowding.

While justice may be on hold, police are still making arrests.

And in the midst of a pandemic, lives could be on the line.

“Jails are one of the most dangerous places for people to be in the midst of a global pandemic. It’s not possible for people to socially distance,” said Saleh.

But Greenberg hopes the state finds other solutions, like non-monetary bond for nonviolent offenders.

“They may be able to get arrested and booked and released. They don’t have to sit in jail because they can’t afford to post bond,” said Greenberg.

So far, the Governor has not expressed support for early inmate release or any executive action that could provide alternatives to monetary bond.

Some court proceedings will still be held in the midst of the crisis like first appearances and bail hearings.

The Supreme Court has encouraged those hearings be conducted remotely.

A circuit Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a Florida attorney that aimed to force the Governor to issue as statewide beach closure.

In the telephonic hearing the Governor’s attorney Nicholas Primrose argued the judge did not have the authority to order the Governor to close the beaches because the Governor’s emergency powers are discretionary.

“The plaintiff in his amended complaint is requesting that this court substitute its judgement for what would be the appropriate policy decision for that of the Governor, which is the textbook definition of the violation of separation of powers,” said Primrose.

The judge agreed, but left open the possibility for the issue to be considered by an appellate court.

The attorney suing the Governor said he intends to follow through with the case despite the ruling.

Filing for unemployment should be easier, but still not flawless as of Monday.

Over the weekend the state made major improvements to the system, adding servers and people, but getting a check could still take some time.

72 new servers were installed to process unemployment claims over the weekend, and more than 200 employees from other agencies trained to answer calls.

“The system can handle up to a hundred and twenty thousand simultaneously connections by individuals filing claims. Recently, we’ve been in the forty to sixty thousand connection range before these servers. That was causing huge stres,” said Governor Ron DeSantis.

More than 60,000 people applied Sunday night when the system went back up.

20,000 applications were received Monday morning.

“From March 15th to April 5th, we received 520,000 cases for reemployment assistance,” said Ken Lawson, Executive Director of the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity.

But the Department can only process 80,000 claims a week, which means there is already a four or five week backlog to getting a check.

“Everyday, as we increase capacity, we’re seeing greater improvement in the system in our ability to process and pay people,” said Lawson.

Also unclear is whether you can receive benefits from the time you lost a job and couldn’t file because of problems in the system.

“If they have been frustrated from applying, and then finally now, the systems better, then I think that should be something that is taken into consideration. I mean, it’s not like they were just sitting on their hands,” said DeSantis.

The Governor said he’s talking to FedEx.

You may soon be able to go to a FedEx office, fill out the form, and have them deliver it.

There was also a new revelation about the Connect computer system, which has had problems since it went live in 2013.

The backup system was never plugged in.

“Shocked and surprised,” said Lawson.

But it is plugged in now.

Ten more servers are on order, and 500 Department of revenue employees will start verifying applications to try and speed the process.