ORLANDO, Fla. — More and more people are in desperate need of food as they struggle to make ends meet amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Hunger relief organization Feeding America estimates the number of Central Floridians who are hungry will increase by almost 50 percent this year. 

That means one in six people may experience food insecurity, compared to one in eight back in 2018, according to numbers from Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida.

“There are a lot of people out there making difficult choices right now,” explained Second Harvest Chief Development Officer Greg Higgerson. “Trying to figure out how they can keep the roof over their head, car on the road, clothes on the backs of kids who are going to school and food oftentimes is not the first thing on that list.”

Second Harvest has gone from distributing 150,000 meals a day in March to more than 300,000 meals per day now, according to Higgerson. 

One meal recipient is Annette Cook of Deland. Cook says she is disabled from a double lung transplant six years ago and has not been leaving the house much because she is a high risk for COVID-19.

She is on a tight budget that has been stretched even thinner because of the pandemic.

“It gets kind of tough when you’re trying to pay a bill and you gotta put food on the table, so you basically ask for help,” she said.

Pre-pandemic, Second Harvest’s Food Finder tool averaged 65 searches per day, according to Higgerson. That jumped to 1,500 per day at the height of the pandemic and has now leveled out around 400 per day, he said.

Higgerson expects the need to remain high even after the pandemic.

“There’s going to be a very long economic tail to this that I hope people will remember,” he said.