Why did some seniors get COVID-19 vaccines at Holiday Park without an appointment?
Some seniors 65 and older were able to get the COVID-19 vaccine at Holiday Park in Fort Lauderdale without an appointment this week, even though the county’s health department is still trying to catch up on its scheduled vaccinations.
The confusion is just another level of frustration for seniors during Florida’s vaccination rollout, which has been embroiled in busy phone lines, crashed websites and residency requirement disputes.
This time it appears to have been caused by mixed signals from Broward County officials.
When the former COVID-19 testing site pivoted to vaccines this month, officials said seniors would have to sign up through the Florida Department of Health in Broward County’s website, browardcovidvaccine.com, to get their injections.
At some point, the city of Fort Lauderdale decided to open Holiday Park to every senior 65 and older who wanted to get the vaccine on a first-come, first-served basis.
On Thursday, Fort Lauderdale City Manager Chris Lagerbloom told Miami Herald news partner CBS4 it was because people still couldn’t make an appointment online. Earlier that day, drivers were spotted lining up at Holiday Park around 2 a.m., hours before the site would open, Local 10 reported.
The “first-come, first-served” pivot was never officially announced and it’s unclear when the change happened. CBS4 says some seniors were able to get a vaccine without an appointment on Tuesday while others were turned away.
Also still unclear is how officials were ensuring that they had enough injections for those with and without appointments, particularly now that Florida is expecting to see a slowdown in federal vaccine supplies.
On Friday, the Florida Department of Health in Broward County told the Miami Herald it would ensure that those who had appointments at Holiday Park would get their vaccines and redirected all other questions to the city of Fort Lauderdale. The city and Lagerbloom, the city manager, did not immediately respond to the Miami Herald’s inquiry.
Broward’s health department later sent an updated statement that moving forward, only those “with a scheduled appointment, verified email confirmation, or text message confirmation” would get the vaccine at Holiday Park.
No new appointments have been scheduled through the health department’s website since last week because a glitch in the system caused it to schedule 40,000 appointments, almost double of what they had initially planned. To try to accommodate the increase, the health department then sent some seniors to Holiday Park instead of their original vaccination site.
As of Thursday, Broward’s Health Department says it has given a total of 37,160 injections at its vaccination sites.
