The decision to give Covid-19 vaccines the green light for seniors in Florida sparked long lines at vaccination sites and a flood of people breaking down county computer systems and hospital phone banks to schedule their vaccines, experts said at Thursday.
And it is clear that supply is not close to keeping up with extraordinary demand.
Governor Ron DeSantis “decided that Florida residents over 65 would have priority over essential workers,” said Aubrey Jewett, a longtime political observer from Florida and an associate professor of political science at the University of Central Florida, in a email to NBC News. “This is a different priority from the federal recommendation, but justified by the fact that Florida has the 2nd highest percentage of elderly people in the country (about 20%) and that people over 65 represent about 80% of the fatalities of Covid-19. “
But while DeSantis and his administration took on a “coordinating role” and ensured that the first doses were for health professionals and nursing home residents, decisions on how to embark on phase two of vaccine delivery are made at the county level. said Jewett.
“This is a very important point and where each state and each county left alone as an island is a setting for absolute disaster, uneven delivery and inefficiency that could lead to more preventable deaths and hospitalizations,” Dr. Sadiya Khan, an Epidemiologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “The lack of infrastructure for a vaccine that we literally planned and knew would come months ago is deeply disappointing, but not unexpected.”
In other coronavirus developments:
- A Wisconsin hospital official was fired for deliberately destroying more than 500 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine. The reason was not immediately clear, but local police and the FBI are investigating.
- Doctors and nurses in Southern California told NBC News that they were reaching a critical point, as a “relentless” increase in new cases was overwhelming hospitals and intensive care units.
- The rich became richer during the pandemic, while millions of Americans saw their economies disappear and many businesses were destroyed.
- The US economy continued to struggle, as the number of Americans who filed for weekly unemployment insurance totaled 787,000 last week.
- President-elect Joe Biden plans to hold a national memorial in honor of those who died of coronavirus the day before he took office next month.
- Georgia Sen. David Perdue, a Republican facing a tight second round next week, will have to be quarantined after a member of his re-election team tested positive for Covid-19.
- Food banks and hospitals in the Mississippi Delta have run out as the coronavirus crisis spreads across the region.
- Elected Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar, a Florida Republican, will miss her inauguration ceremony on Sunday in Washington 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 dinner services for the New Year’s weekend.
The launch of the vaccine on a first-come, first-served basis in Lee County, southwest Florida, has resulted in an embarrassing national spectacle – hundreds of seniors, many wrapped in blankets and winter coats, camping overnight in long lines at test sites who quickly ran out of vaccines.
“It reminded me of the pre-internet days when we got in a long line the night before tickets for rock shows for the Prince ‘Purple Rain’ tour started selling in the 1980s and hoping they wouldn’t sell out before I get to the window to buy mine, ”said Jewett.
Lee County manager Roger Desjarlais told reporters on Wednesday that changes were being made.
“We’re not sure yet, but our goal is to have a reservation system available sometime within a week so that we don’t have 2,000 showing up at one location,” he said.
In Broward County, north of Miami, the elderly who were trying to get a coronavirus vaccine this week filled the phone lines and administrators stopped making appointments after announcing that they were scheduled until February.
The state health department’s Broward office website also crashed because it failed to keep up with the high volume of consultations.
South of Tampa, Sarasota resident Christine Maxwell said in a letter to The Tampa Bay Times: “It’s absolute chaos in Sarasota County.”
Maxwell wrote that five hours after she tried to schedule an appointment for an injection, the county health department suddenly announced that she would start vaccinating people over 65, “but that all appointments had already been scheduled.”
“They provided the process for the paperwork needed to get a vaccine as more supplies arrived and noticed that a consultation was needed, but did not share information on how to get a consultation,” wrote Maxwell. “What the hell?”
The DeSantis administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the various distribution confusions and the most recent count of how many doses were delivered.
During a news conference on Wednesday, DeSantis admitted that there were flaws in the distribution of the vaccine.
“There is obviously a crowd of interested people,” he said. “Demand exceeds supply. On the one hand, this is good because it was something we wanted people to have confidence in. “
Jewett agreed.
“While this is a frustrating situation, it can be seen as a potentially positive sign that many people want to receive the vaccine after initial reports that many people may not want or be reluctant to take it,” he said.
DeSantis, a Republican who took office in 2019 with the strong support of President Donald Trump, was severely criticized for his state’s slow response to the pandemic and for minimizing the danger publicly.
In April, when states like New York were being devastated by Covid-19 while Florida reported far fewer cases, DeSantis claimed victory over the virus during a visit with Trump at the White House.
“We have not seen an explosion of new cases,” said DeSantis on April 29, the same day he signed an executive order to begin reopening Florida, after less than two months in quarantine.
But as of 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 assessed vaccine distribution issues on the same day that the Florida Department of Health closed the book in 2020, reporting 17,192 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, which would be the highest total in a single day since the pandemic began.
And while New York still leads the country with 38,636 deaths due to Covid-19, the majority of Florida’s 21,856 coronavirus deaths were reported after DeSantis eased the state’s pandemic restrictions.
“Governor DeSantis is certainly taking a more active role when it comes to vaccines than setting state rules for masks or other types of Covid restrictions,” said Jewett.
In addition, Jewett said, DeSantis hopes to be re-elected in a few years.
“Politically, there is a broad agreement between Republicans and Democrats and Trump supporters and opponents to make the Covid-19 vaccine available as quickly as possible,” said Jewett. “So, politically, Governor DeSantis has every reason to be involved and support him, and by most signs that he has been.”
“The launch was not perfect, but, in my opinion, it was not for lack of effort from the governor’s office,” said Jewett.