In this archive photo from December 16, 2020, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis watches as Nurse Christine Philips, left, administered the Pfizer vaccine to resident Vera Leip, 88, in John Knox Village in Pompano Beach, Florida. Nursing home residents and Florida health professionals have begun to receive the Pfizer vaccine. Locally, the Modern vaccine is also being offered.
Charlotte County will offer the first doses of the coronavirus vaccine to the public aged 65 and older starting Wednesday, from 9 am to noon, at the Harold Avenue Regional Park.
The elderly should make an appointment. Appointments will be available for Wednesday and next week as well.
The county received 2,000 doses of the Modern vaccine on Monday, said Chief of Health Joe Pepe The Daily Sun on Tuesday. This adds up to the thousands of doses sent to hospitals in the area for their employees.
The county will use several hundred of these doses of Moderna on Tuesday to vaccinate the emergency medical staff, who are the county firefighters, Pepe said.
The rest will be available to the public, starting at age 65, according to a priority set by Governor Ron DeSantis last week.
But you can’t just go to 23400 Harold Ave. and get vaccinated. You must register first, I hope online at www.coadfl.org, said Pepe.
He said that if the software is not ready in time, residents should call their local health department at 941-624-7200 to make an appointment.
This is the first of two doses required for the Modern vaccine for maximum immunity. Doses should be 28 days apart.
Anyone who receives a vaccine will have to wait 15 minutes at the site to ensure that there is no allergic reaction, which happens on very rare occasions.
After more than a million doses of COVID administered so far in the United States, there have been a handful of allergic reactions for people with known allergies, according to the US Centers for Disease Control. The CDC is advising anyone with a severe allergy to discuss with their doctor whether to receive the vaccine for COVID-19.
Vaccinated people will receive a vaccination card, Pepe said, showing when they were vaccinated and with which vaccine, in this case, Moderna.
Each vaccination will be registered in the state’s vaccination database, Pepe said, but so far not in a national database. So if someone gets their first dose of Moderna here in Florida and then goes to another state in four weeks, she’ll want to show her card to confirm the correct time for her second dose.
Pepe said that it will be up to individuals, at this point, to control which vaccine they will receive and when they will need the second dose.
The clinical team will not be checking the residence to receive the vaccine, he said.
Pepe said he was relieved to offer vaccines to the public.
“For a year, we were on the defensive,” he said of the fight against coronavirus. “We can finally be on the offensive.”