Jacksonville site, 6 others in Florida offer COVID-19 vaccinations on Sunday in partnership with churches

JACKSONVILLE, Florida. – Seven locations in Florida, including one in Jacksonville, offered COVID-19 vaccines on Sunday in partnership with places of worship, Governor Ron DeSantis announced.

“We really believe that ensuring that these vaccines reach all segments of the community is important and we think that working with our houses of worship is one way to do that,” DeSantis told a news conference on Sunday morning in Lynn Haven. “We started making one in Pensacola last Saturday. It was very successful. “

At 9 am Sunday, the Baptist Church of St. Matthew in the Moncrief neighborhood of Jacksonville began administering 500 preselected doses of the vaccine to people aged 65 and over. Rovenia Brooks and her husband, Earl, received the first dose of the vaccine there and said they have an appointment to receive the second dose in a few weeks.

“Our church – MT. Sinai (Baptist Missionary Church), Pastor (RL) Gundy – they called us at home, asked if we wanted to take the picture, ”Rovenia Brooks said,“ At first, I was nervous, so I said no. So the next day, Friday, I called him and called back to the church and he said: call the (state senator) Audrey Gibson’s office and let the secretary take your name and put it on Mt’s list Sinai, so I did it. “

Donald Foy also explained to News4Jax how he had access to the photo.

“The appointment was made, in fact, a pastor friend, went through his process on the line and we got through Senator Audrey Gibson’s office,” said Foy. “It went through the process and I was able to get in and get it.”

In addition to Jacksonville and Lynn Haven, DeSantis said, the sites running on Sunday were in Tallahassee, Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale, St. Lucie and Tampa. He said there were 50 different houses of worship, many of them predominantly African American churches, that participated.

“It’s a lot of teamwork,” he said. “It was the state providing resources. It was the city and the county working with all the churches to make it happen, and so they assigned each church a certain number of times to receive, and then the pastor would work to be able to bring some of the elderly people to those times. “

The governor said that the priority remains the vaccination of the elderly.

“We are putting the elderly first,” said DeSantis. “We are doing this in a number of ways. You see that some of these large hospital systems are now beginning to produce many vaccines. We appreciate that. You also review some of the county’s health departments that work in their communities to vaccinate the elderly. You look at some of the drive-through sites that the state is supporting, as well as some of the locations across the state of Florida. This is a very convenient thing. And then our partnership with Publix. “

As of Sunday, according to data from the Florida Department of Health, 558,326 people in Florida have been vaccinated, including 275,771 people aged 65 and over.

Fortunately, said DeSantis, the state is scheduled to receive about 250,000 additional injections of the first dose next week. He added that he asked if Florida could potentially achieve more.

News4Jax contacted the Florida Department of Health to confirm who was in charge of making appointments at St. Matthew’s Baptist Church, but did not receive an answer on Sunday afternoon.