University of West Florida’s department of Global Hospitality & Tourism Management,
Pensacola
“For the tourism industry in Northwest Florida there is no playbook at this point for dealing with the pandemic. I would say that those business owners that have developed a plan to be as flexible, creative and transparent as possible are coming out ahead.
I have noticed that some hotel owners are taking this opportunity to spruce up their hotels if they have the money.
But across the board, the luxury lodging sector is taking the biggest hit.
Fortunately, for the hospitality industry we’re in a bubble here in Northwest Florida. We are a drive market, and people are still driving here from New Orleans and Atlanta and other major southeastern cities. People still want to come to Northwest Florida and get away like they did before COVID.”
“Suicide rates have fallen globally, but they have climbed every year in the U.S. since 1999. And, in fact, they rose 35% in the last two decades. That is significant,” she said. “However, funding and prevention efforts for suicide prevention have continued to lag far behind those for other leading causes of death, like cancer or heart disease.”
In her experience on a college campus in 2020, Manassah said the pandemic exacerbated existing issues of loneliness and depression that were already present in American college students before coronavirus forced everyone indoors.
“Loneliness is an issue. College students, in the past, pre-pandemic, for the previous 23 years, we saw rates of loneliness increasing nationally for American college students,” she said. “So you can imagine that after the pandemic started and people were quarantining and in isolation, those feelings of loneliness and isolation only increased.”
500 Escambia residents get COVID vaccine Sunday, part of state pilot to test rollout Annie Blanks, Pensacola News Journal
About 500 Escambia County residents were among the first in the general population to receive the COVID-19 vaccination on Sunday morning, thanks to a pilot program initiated by the Florida Division of Emergency Management and Florida Department of Health intended to test how the vaccine rollout will look on the ground.
The residents, all aged 65 or older and mostly minorities, were recruited by the state for the vaccine this past week through their churches and other grassroots community efforts. The pilot program happened Sunday morning in Escambia County and at least one other Florida county, according to Eric Gilmore, the county s interim public safety director.
NO VACCINES AVAILABLE FOR LOCAL SENIORS AT HOSPITALS YET — Cheryl King – NewsRadio1620 newsradio1620.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newsradio1620.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.