California and Florida are both rolling back the opening of their economies as they struggle with COVID-19. But public health experts say the two states are not the same.

Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

• California is rolling back the reopening of its economy, closing bars state-wide following an increase in COVID-19 cases.
• The state's positive test rate has hit a two-week average of 7.4%.
• The move comes weeks after Florida did the same. But the states are not doing equally as bad.
• Florida's positive test rate has been in the double digits for weeks, while California hasn't cleared 10% since April.
• "Miami is now the epicenter of the pandemic," Dr. Lilian Abbo, chief of infection prevention at Jackson Health System, told the Associated Press. "What we were seeing in Wuhan (China) six months ago. Now, we are there."
• "I think what has happened is that some states have been content to flatten the curve as opposed to really bend the curve, as opposed to really bend the curve and drive it down to zero," Dr. Thomas Tsai, of Harvard University, told Business Insider.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

California and Florida were both early COVID-19 success stories, with wildly different approaches: the former shut everything down early, and managed to escape the fate of New York, while the latter opened back up — bars, gyms, indoor dining — weeks before most other states.

Neither is in a particularly good place today. California reported more than 8,300 new coronavirus cases on July 13, up from just over 3,200 a month before. That's not just because it's conducting more tests, either; the rate of positives is climbing too, hitting 7.4% on Sunday, up from a 14-day average of 5.6% two weeks before. 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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