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The decision to give the green light to Covid-19 vaccinations for seniors in Florida has caused long queues at vaccination sites and a deluge of people destroying county computer systems and hospital phone banks for schedule their injections, experts said Thursday.
And it is clear that supply is nowhere near keeping up with extraordinary demand.
Gov. Ron DeSantis “decided that Florida residents over the age of 65 would be given priority over essential workers,” said Aubrey Jewett, longtime political observer in Florida and associate professor of political science at the University of Central Florida, in an email to NBC News. “This is a different priority from the federal recommendation, but justified by the fact that Florida has the second highest percentage of seniors in the country (about 20%) and people over 65 make up about 80% of deaths due to Covid-19. “
But while DeSantis and its administration took on a “coordinating role” and ensured that the first doses were sent to frontline healthcare workers and nursing home residents, decisions on how to launch phase two of vaccine distribution is being taken at the county level, Jewett said.
“This is such an important point and a point where every state and county left alone as an island is setup for utter disaster, inequitable delivery and inefficiency that could lead to preventable deaths and hospitalizations,” Dr Sadiya Khan, an epidemiologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “The lack of infrastructure for a vaccine that we are literally planning and known to be coming for months is totally disappointing, but not unexpected.”
In other coronavirus developments:
- A Wisconsin hospital worker has been fired for deliberately destroying more than 500 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine. The motive was not immediately clear, but local police and the FBI are investigating.
- Southern California doctors and nurses told NBC News they were reaching a breaking point as a “relentless” wave of new cases engulfed hospitals and intensive care units.
- The rich got richer during the pandemic as millions of Americans saw their savings wipe out and many businesses were destroyed.
- The US economy continued to struggle as the number of Americans filing their first weekly unemployment claim stood at 787,000 last week.
- President-elect Joe Biden plans to hold a national memorial to honor those who died from the coronavirus the day before his swearing-in next month.
- Georgian Senator David Perdue, a Republican facing a tight second round next week, will have to be quarantined after a member of his re-election team tests positive for Covid-19.
- Food banks and hospitals in the Mississippi Delta have been strained as the coronavirus crisis has spread to the region.
- MP-elect María Elvira Salazar, a Republican from Florida, will miss her swearing-in ceremony in Washington on Sunday because she tested positive for the coronavirus.
- Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the city of Austin after local authorities imposed new Covid-19 restrictions on food services for New Years weekend.
The first-come, first-served vaccine rollout this week in Lee County, southwest Florida, created an embarrassing national spectacle – hundreds of seniors, many swaddled in blankets and coats winter, camped overnight in long queues at testing sites that quickly ran out of vaccines.
“It reminded me of the days before the internet where there was a long line the night before rock concert tickets for the Prince ‘Purple Rain’ tour went on sale in the 1980s and hoping that they didn’t sell until they got to the window to buy mine, ”Jewett said.
Lee County Manager Roger Desjarlais told reporters on Wednesday that changes were underway.
“We’re not sure yet, but our goal is to have a reservation system available within a week so that we don’t have 2,000 showing up on a site,” he said. .
In Broward County, north of Miami, seniors trying to get their coronavirus shots this week overwhelmed phone lines and administrators stopped making appointments after announcing they had been booked until February.
The state health department’s Broward office website also collapsed because it was unable to keep up with the high volume of inquiries.
Just south of Tampa, Christine Maxwell, a resident of Sarasota, said in a letter to the Tampa Bay Times: “This is utter chaos in Sarasota County.
Maxwell wrote that five hours after trying to make an appointment for a vaccine, the county health department suddenly announced that it would start vaccinating people over 65 “but all appointments were already taken”.
“They gave the paperwork process needed to get a vaccine as more supplies arrive and noted that an appointment is required, but did not share any information on how to get an appointment. Maxwell wrote. “What’s going on?”
The DeSantis administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the various dispensing snafus and for the latest count of the number of doses dispensed.
At a press conference on Wednesday, DeSantis admitted there had been problems with the release of the vaccine.
“There is obviously a crush of interested people,” he said. “Demand exceeds supply. On the one hand, that’s a good thing because it’s something that we wanted people to trust.
Jewett agreed.
“Although this is a frustrating situation, it can be taken as a potentially positive sign that many people want to get the vaccine after the first reports that many people might be reluctant or reluctant to get it,” he said. he declares.
DeSantis, a Republican who took office in 2019 with the strong backing of President Donald Trump, has come under heavy criticism for his state’s slow response to the pandemic and for publicly downplaying the danger.
In April, as states like New York were ravaged by Covid-19 as Florida reported far fewer cases, DeSantis claimed victory over the virus during a visit with Trump to the White House.
“We haven’t seen an explosion of new cases,” DeSantis said on April 29, the same day he signed an executive order to begin reopening Florida after less than two months of quarantine.
But on Thursday, Florida had the third highest number of Covid-19 cases in the country with 1.3 million, according to the latest data from NBC News. In contrast, New York had 966,384.
Experts weighed in on vaccine distribution issues on the same day the Florida Department of Health closed the book on 2020 by reporting 17,192 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, which would be the largest total in a day since the start. of the pandemic.
And while New York City still leads the country with 38,636 deaths from Covid-19, most of the 21,856 coronavirus deaths in Florida were reported after DeSantis eased state restrictions on the pandemic.
“Governor DeSantis is certainly playing a more active role on vaccines than he has taken in setting statewide rules for masks or other types of Covid restrictions,” a Jewett said.
Plus, Jewett said, DeSantis hopes to be re-elected in a few years.
“Politically, there is broad agreement among Republicans and Democrats and Trump supporters and opponents to make the Covid-19 vaccine available as quickly as possible,” Jewett said. “So politically Governor DeSantis has every reason to get involved and support him, and by most signs he has been.
“The deployment was not perfect, but in my opinion it was not a lack of effort on the part of the governor’s office,” Jewett said.
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