MIAMI — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who for weeks has resisted more stringent statewide measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus, on Wednesday signed an order directing the state’s more than 21 million residents to largely stay at home.
Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, relented after a morning telephone call with President Trump, who on Tuesday delivered the gravest projections yet from the White House suggesting that up to 240,000 Americans could die from the infection, even with serious restrictions in place.
The governor said he started coming around to the necessity of a statewide order once the White House dropped its earlier, rosier suggestion that stringent social distancing measures could be lifted by mid-April, and extended national guidelines to combat the coronavirus until April 30.
“When the president did the 30-day extension, to me, that was, ‘People aren’t just going to go back to work,’” Mr. DeSantis said at a news conference in Tallahassee, the state capital. “That’s a national pause button.”
His order, which takes effect at 12:01 a.m. on Friday, limits movement and personal interactions outside the home to “essential” services and activities.
The number of coronavirus cases in the state jumped by more than 1,000 on Tuesday to reach nearly 7,000. The total is probably an undercount because experts say testing, especially of younger and asymptomatic people, remains insufficient. At least 87 people have died.
The coronavirus poses a unique risk for Florida, the third-largest state in the country, where a quarter of the population is older than 60 and the economy relies in large part on an $86 billion-a-year tourism industry fueled by 125 million annual visitors, including young spring break visitors who may have helped the virus spread.
“Obviously in Florida, the tourism is totally shot right now,” Mr. DeSantis said.
Mr. DeSantis has also been reluctant to break with Mr. Trump, who helped him win the governorship in 2018. Their close relationship has weighed on the president throughout the federal response to the coronavirus threat. A newly declared resident of Florida, Mr. Trump sees the state as vital to his re-election, and he has been responsive to Mr. DeSantis’s requests for such things as drive-through testing sites and protective equipment for health care workers.
Jared Moskowitz, the state’s emergency management director, said that Florida has received four shipments from the federal stockpile of supplies, including 500,000 N95 masks, 250,000 face shields, 714,000 gloves, 1.2 million surgical masks and 200,000 gowns.
Mr. DeSantis called Mr. Trump on Saturday morning and complained, as he had publicly before the call, that New Yorkers flocking to Fort Lauderdale and elsewhere in South Florida were bringing the virus with them. Mr. Trump responded by tweeting that he was considering a quarantine of the New York tristate area, a statement that flummoxed officials in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
The president’s aides — some of whom have tired of Mr. DeSantis’s special requests — tried to explain to the president that it would be almost impossible to enforce such a quarantine. Mr. Trump has also resisted a broader national stay-at-home order, which his advisers see as at odds with years of Republican orthodoxy about states’ rights, and unfair to states that are not experiencing major outbreaks.
As recently as Monday, Mr. DeSantis had insisted that the only stay-at-home order he had signed, for the state’s four most densely populated counties from Key West to West Palm Beach, would be needed only through April 15.
On Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis said one reason he had not extended the order statewide was because the White House coronavirus task force had made no such recommendation.
Patricia Mazzei reported from Miami, and Maggie Haberman from New York.
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