How COVID changed Florida in 5 years

Everyone seems to remember their last moments of normalcy in the spring of 2020, that liminal space before one of the most profound societal disruptions in generations.

Maybe it was a wedding where the guests were iffy about hugging. Perhaps it was seeing REO Speedwagon at Ruth Eckerd Hall in what turned out to be the last big concert on that stage or any other in Tampa Bay for a year.

Two days later, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Two days after that, the schools were closed, followed soon by every bar and restaurant in Tampa Bay. Within a week, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties were directing residents to stay in their homes 24 hours a day if possible.

Then came the loneliness, the fear, the shock of losing those we couldn’t properly say goodbye to.

Like Hemingway’s description of going bankrupt, we’d entered a pandemic two ways: gradually, then suddenly.

However you care to mark the start, approximately five years have passed since the beginning of the COVID-19 era.

The families of the 87,000 Floridians killed by the virus will surely never forget the awful details of the lockdown months and the years that followed.

For others, the specifics of those days have already faded into a haze of nasal swabs and video chats. We’re left with a stew of vocabulary words like “N95,” “supply chain disruption” and “contactless.”

What the COVID-19 pandemic wrought is still all around us every day in Florida. Not in superficial leftovers, like the fading stickers exactly six feet apart on the floor of a BayCare clinic or the ubiquitous sanitizer stations standing sentry at our malls, but in changes so ingrained in how we live that we might not associate them with COVID anymore.

Motorists headed south over Georgia’s southern border are now greeted by signs along the interstate welcoming them to “the free state of Florida,” a term Gov. Ron DeSantis adopted as he declared vaccine mandates an attack on freedom. That stance helped forge a new political identity for our state.

The pandemic’s effects are also clear in how our children learn, in the cost of our housing and in the way residents feel about what were once thought of as routine vaccines for highly contagious diseases.

Tampa Bay Times reporters Rebecca Liebson, Christopher O’Donnell, Jeffrey S. Solochek, Michelle Stark, Kirby Wilson and Sharon Kennedy Wynne shared ways it’s affected some key areas of Tampa Bay.

DeSantis pitched a ‘free’ Florida

The pandemic may go down as the single most pivotal political event of the 21st century.

As DeSantis often points out, in 2020, Democrats narrowly outnumbered Republicans in the state. Just five years later, the state is home to 1.2 million more registered Republicans than Democrats.

During the pandemic, the Sunshine State saw a massive population influx from around the country. This was no coincidence, Republicans say. DeSantis has attributed his party’s explosive popularity here to his pandemic-era policies. Florida businesses and schools stayed closed for far less time than in blue states like California and New York.

Whatever people’s motivation for moving here, the political reality couldn’t be more apparent. Florida is a red state. It’s home to the president. Its importance to the national conservative project is paramount. And it looks likely to stay that way for some time.

— Kirby Wilson

Trust in medicine declined

The pandemic could have been a triumph for science.

Led by President Donald Trump, Operation Warp Speed produced an effective vaccine in record time that saved 3 million lives through the first three years of the pandemic.

But Florida emerged deeply divided on the vaccine, public health and science.

DeSantis championed “medical freedom” bills that opposed federal guidance on masks, social distancing and vaccine mandates. He derided scientific experts and replaced Florida’s then-surgeon general with Joseph Ladapo, a vaccine and mask skeptic who still holds the job.

Vaccine skepticism and the championing of medical freedom have continued to strengthen. A growing group of Florida parents have balked at the public health benefits of once-routine measles, mumps and rubella shots.

Pre-pandemic, roughly 94% of Florida kindergartners were up to date on immunizations, data shows. By last school year, that rate had fallen to 88%, which is considered inadequate to protect against outbreaks of highly contagious diseases like measles.

More than 6% of Florida school-age children now have religious exemptions to vaccines on file, a number that is rising.

A further decline in immunizations, said Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist with the University of South Florida, will eventually mean “outbreaks that we haven’t seen in decades.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic did more than shake people’s faith in the COVID-19 vaccine,” he said in an email. “Instead, it cast a shadow over the entire vaccine infrastructure.”

— Christopher O’Donnell

School choice grew, students struggled

Students headed home for spring break in 2020 unaware they’d be logging on to class from home for at least the rest of the school year. By the fall, kindergartners in the class of 2033 were introduced to school by virtual chats or socially distanced desk seating.

As parents paid closer attention to the materials and lessons being taught, some didn’t like what they saw. Complaints about course content later manifested in battles against “critical race theory” and “diversity, equity and inclusion” that continue to this day.

Independent micro-schools popped up to offer alternatives, and interest in home education and voucher-funded private classes rose. Lawmakers responded by making it easier to take part in those choices, and the numbers have surged. (Since 2020, the number of students using vouchers and tax-credit scholarships has more than doubled as the eligibility requirements have eased.)

Meanwhile, schools are still working to overcome pandemic-related learning loss, according to the Education Recovery Scorecard. Millions in federal dollars that schools used to recover math and reading skills ran out in the fall.

They’re now taking steps to keep what worked. For instance, Pinellas County schools shifted funds to keep a successful reading program for kindergarten and first-grade students while scaling back field trips and pulling back summer school programs to focus on the most struggling students.

— Jeffrey S. Solochek

Where we work changed

While essential workers risked their lives to care for the sick or deliver groceries during the early days of the pandemic, hordes of Floridians with desk jobs suddenly found themselves working from home.

At first, we thought it would only be a matter of weeks until we were all standing around the watercooler again. But months, then years, passed before many companies returned to the office.

Companies like Kforce adopted hybrid work models; that office downgraded to smaller headquarters when it moved from Ybor to a space in Midtown in 2022. Others never returned to the office. Nearly 20% of Tampa Bay workers worked from home in 2023, according to the latest Census data. That’s compared to about 8% in 2019.

Gone are the days of dated suburban office parks — Tampa Bay’s largest sold at a loss last year. With fewer and smaller leases overall, the offices that get filled now are centrally located — think Midtown or Water Street — and chock-full of modern amenities to entice workers to make the commute.

— Rebecca Liebson

Restaurants were delayed, but more takeout appeared

Empty concert halls and distanced restaurant patrons became vivid symbols of the loss of social connection early in the pandemic. Major local events like Gasparilla were canceled. Florida’s theme parks closed for months, as did cultural venues. When they reopened, mask and vaccine requirements curbed crowds.

By mid-2021, most of those safeguards disappeared, but other changes to the cultural and restaurant landscape have lasted. Some longtime institutions, like downtown St. Petersburg’s beloved Haslam’s Book Store that opened in 1933, or Ybor City’s 60-year-old La Tropicana Cafe, closed and never came back. New restaurants that were in the works were delayed. In some cases, we’re still waiting for spots announced around that time to open.

But convenience has grown. Amid the pandemic, the Florida Aquarium and Disney World launched reservations for safety reasons but have continued them after seeing the benefits of shorter lines and more efficient staffing. Restaurants still offer online ordering and curbside takeout, things they often first tried amid lockdowns.

— Sharon Kennedy Wynne and Michelle Stark

A reshaping of health care

The pandemic made telehealth a must-have for most hospitals and clinics, with a quarter of all visits to Florida primary care doctors in 2020 taking place by videoconference. Though that rate plummeted to 6% one year later as immunity increased, telehealth remained a lasting option.

Florida’s uninsured rate fell as legislation passed in the heat of the pandemic suspended Medicaid eligibility reviews and subsidized insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Though Florida has unenrolled 1.3 million residents from Medicaid since 2023, enough Floridians continue to benefit from those subsidies that millions more may lose insurance if Congress does not extend them before they expire at the end of 2025.

The pandemic also changed how hospitals are built, with the addition of more negative pressure isolation rooms for infectious patients.

— Christopher O’Donnell

The great COVID migration

With more Americans able to work from anywhere, many decided to pick up their belongings and move to the beach. The Tampa Bay area saw an incredible population explosion.

The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro area has added over 300,000 residents since 2019, according to the latest Census estimates.

Many residents tried to seize the opportunity to buy a home amid historically low interest rates. But that spike in demand caused prices to climb.

In March 2020, the median price for a home in the Tampa Bay area was $230,000. Now it’s closer to $360,000, according to data from Homes.com, a subsidiary of CoStar.

The rental market also felt the surge, and developers scrambled to build enough apartments to satisfy the newcomers.

Average monthly rent went from $1,405 in the first quarter of 2020 to $1,851 now, CoStar data shows.

Though price growth has begun to even out this year as more properties come online, demand remains as strong as ever.

Unless we reach a point where there are more homes available than there are people living here, we’ll likely never see prices fall as low as they were before the pandemic.

— Rebecca Liebson