Lee County commissioners delay decision to shelter in place

FORT MYERS, Fla. — Lee County commissioners held an emergency meeting to discuss their response to the coronavirus outbreak.
County leaders are still deciding whether to implement a shelter-in-place order.
After hearing input from Lee Health and several city mayors, commissioners decided to delay any further decision until Monday.
As coronavirus cases continue to rise here in Lee County, some say commissioners need to act fast to flatten the curve
Mayors from Cape Coral, Fort Myers, and Sanibel are urging commissioners to issue a mandate to shelter-in-place order.
“The longer you prolong, the bigger the problem is going to get,” said the Mayor of Cape Coral, Joe Coviello.
Lee County commissioners say they rather wait it out; in the meantime, they are urging people to voluntarily stay at home.
“We need you to start thinking...before you leave the house is this trip necessary or can I stay home?” said Lee County Commissioner, Brian Hamman.
Lee Health President and CEO stressed the importance of social distancing, stating that the county must work towards requiring people to stay at home nearly 60 percent of the time.
“We want to plan before you need it, there is no such thing as over-preparing, there is only under preparing, ” said Dr. Larry Antonucci, Lee Health's president and CEO.
Commissioners say they will monitor hot spots over the weekend.
“Did we see folks going crazy on the waterways? Did we see folks having parties in the parks, how did our traffic counts look?” said Brian Hamman.
THE Lee County commissioners will meet on Monday to reevaluate & determine if stricter measures need to be enforced.
“We got that meeting scheduled to pull the trigger on tougher methods,” said Brian Hamman.
Fox 4 will stay update with the latest regarding how the county measures social distancing over the next 5 days.