PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. - Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis banned all onsite dining at restaurants statewide Friday and the Seminole Tribe closed its casinos, the latest coronavirus -related closures affecting a state that is heavily dependent on tourism and consumer spending to pay its bills.

The governor's order allows restaurants to still provide take-out and delivery. He had already closed the state's bars to onsite sales. Earlier Friday, he had closed beaches, movie theatres, concert halls, gymnasiums and similar businesses in Broward and Palm Beach counties, the state's second- and third-most populous counties.

Exemptions are made for restaurants that are part of hospitals and airports and gyms that are an amenity at a hotel or residential complex as long as the capacity is less than 10.

Some cities and counties statewide have already banned beach-going and set restrictions on bars and restaurants, including Miami-Dade County, the state's most populous.

Two other large states have gone even farther than DeSantis: California and New York have ordered nearly all residents to stay home.

Florida now has 520 confirmed cases of coronavirus, 70% of them in those three neighbouring South Florida counties. That is about a 30% jump since Thursday. There have been nine deaths statewide.

The Seminoles announced they will close their six casinos statewide at 6 p.m. The casinos generate billions, employ 14,000 people and draw thousands of people daily. The state's theme parks, including Walt Disney World and Universal-Orlando, have closed and cruise ships are not sailing.

The state, which has no income tax, receives a large portion of its revenue from sales, hotel and other taxes paid not just by residents, but the approximately 120 million people who visit Florida annually — a number that will surely plummet this year because of the closures. The Legislature just passed a $92 billion budget Thursday.

Meanwhile, Florida opened its first state-run drive-thru testing facility Friday at a Broward park, where it will test health care workers and seniors with symptoms or who have recently been on a cruise or travelled internationally.

Dozens of National Guardsman dressed in fatigues guided cars past empty playground equipment and picnic benches to a tent where healthcare workers in white, protective suits took quick nose swabs.

It takes about 8 minutes to swab everyone in a car. The samples are refrigerated and, for now, shipped to a third-party lab for testing. It's unclear how long it will take to get results, but officials said it's quicker than relying on the federal labs. Memorial Regional Hospital plans to soon open a local lab that will be able to process several hundred tests daily.

“It's important that people are able to understand and temper their expectations ... it's not going to be done overnight. There's a national backlog," DeSantis said while visiting the site Thursday night.

Officials hope they will soon have enough supplies to test different demographics, especially young healthy adults, to get a better sense of how many people have the virus but aren't experiencing symptoms. Officials fear they are taking fewer precautions and unknowingly spreading the virus.

DeSantis said that information will better help determine future closures.

“Right now people are kinda flying blind because there haven't been enough tests done," he said.

DeSantis also Friday signed an executive order allowing city and county commissions to meet through online and phone conferencing services, but those must be accessible to the public.

According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover.

___

The Associated Press receives support for health and science coverage from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

___

Spencer reported from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Associated Press writers Curt Anderson and Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale and Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee contributed to this report.

__

Follow AP coverage of the virus outbreak at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.

News from © The Associated Press, 2020