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What you need to know for Friday, July 17

Thanks for waking up on the Brightside with 10 Tampa Bay. Here's everything you need to know this morning.

TAMPA, Fla. — Good morning Tampa Bay! We made it to Friday!

Let's take a look at the top stories you'll need to know.

Not setting sail anytime soon 🚢

If you were planning to hop on a cruise ship for some much-needed downtime, you're now going to have to wait even longer. 

An update from the Centers for Disease Control on Thursday says cruise ships in the United States will not sail through Sept. 30-- or until the Secretary of Health and Human Services declares COVID-19 is no longer a public health emergency, or the CDC director modifies the order based on certain public health updates. 

You know, whichever comes first.

RELATED: CDC: Cruise ships can't sail until at least Oct. 1

Add A/C to the list of concerns ❄️

As if sending students back to school this fall wasn't a hard enough decision for parents, a Tampa Bay virologist says you should add the school's air conditioning system into consideration.

A study done in China pointed to air conditioning as a contributor to the spread of COVID-19 inside a restaurant. It found that the airflow of the air conditioning system was consistent with droplet transmission from person to person. Basically, the study said one outbreak was traced to a restaurant, where a group of people sitting in the path of the air conditioning all caught the novel coronavirus.

That can be a problem for Tampa Bay area schools, with older air conditioning units that aren't equipped for the type of air exchange needed to lessen the risk of contracting COVID-19. 

RELATED: Doctor: Consider air conditioning in classrooms before deciding on in-person classes

No mask order, no money 😷

A U.S. lawmaker is proposing that federal relief for COVID-19 in the next stimulus be withheld from states that do not mandate the use of facemasks statewide. 

It comes as more than half the states in the country have issued orders for people to use face coverings to stop the spread of coronavirus, but some remain resistant to making it a rule. 

Florida is one of the states that does not have a statewide mask mandate in place.

RELATED: No state mask rule? No COVID-19 money, Feinstein proposes

RELATED: Florida coronavirus: How to search for COVID-19 cases by county and zip code

 

 

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