It’s Friday, December 18th - and NBC 6 has the top stories for the day.
No. 1 - All four occupants of a small plane were hospitalized after the aircraft crashed Thursday in Pembroke Pines.
The plane went down around 4:30 p.m. in the area of Pembroke Road and University Drive, not far from North Perry Airport.
Federal Aviation Administration officials said four people -- including two adults and two children -- were on the single-engine SOCATA TB10 Tobago when it went down shortly after leaving the airport. Multiple sources say the pilot is a Miramar police sergeant.
No. 2 - As the United States continues to roll out the Pfizer vaccine for health care workers and nursing home residents, government advisers endorsed a second vaccine on Thursday. The Moderna vaccine will likely soon receive emergency use approval from the Food and Drug Administration.
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Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen and U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams will publicly receive a COVID-19 vaccine on Friday. President-elect Joe Biden is expected to get a shot as soon as next week, NBC News reports.
Local
No. 3 - A Hialeah hospital is on the list to get the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine if it gets final approval from the Food and Drug Administration and the green light from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Hialeah Hospital is one of the 15 in South Florida that will receive a shipment. Broward North, Doctors Hospital in Coral Gables, Homestead Hospital, Holy Cross in Fort Lauderdale and North Shore Medical Center in Miami are a few others on the governor’s list to receive Moderna once it gets the final approval.
No. 4 - Florida added more than 13,000 new COVID-19 cases Thursday, the most reported in a single day dating back to July, as virus-related deaths in the state increased by over 100.
The 13,148 new confirmed COVID-19 cases brought Florida's total to 1,168,483, according to the daily report from the state's department of health. The large amount of cases are partly a result of a large amount of people being tested, nearly 170,000 in Thursday's report.
No. 5 - Gov. Ron DeSantis doesn't have much use for some of the so-called experts.
"A lot of these experts were saying that the United States, because of Thanksgiving, was going to have this massive surge, there was going to be all this problem because people had the gall to go see their family," he said Tuesday. "Well, okay, look at the national indicators since Thanksgiving. It’s actually gone down."
Some indicators in some states have gone down since then, but not in Florida. Dr. Jason Salemi, a University of South Florida epidemiologist, posted on Twitter Thursday a graph showing more Floridians 65 and over are being infected now than at any time during the pandemic.
No. 6 - Weatherwise, a cold front has arrived, bringing 50s with a breeze to South Florida early Friday. Keep your NBC 6 app handy for push alerts on any severe weather as well as First Alert Doppler 6000.
