‘As fast as possible.’ Florida’s COVID vaccine rush operates on uneven playing field
The lead agency running Florida’s COVID vaccine rollout has one main goal in mind: speed.
Other considerations, like which areas have been hit hardest by the virus, are secondary.
“My job at the division is to get shots in arms as fast as possible for people that qualify. That’s my job,” said Jared Moskowitz, the director of the state’s Division of Emergency Management. “Do we look at where we have outbreaks? Of course we do.”
The Division of Emergency Management, most familiar to Floridians as the agency handling hurricane response, has distributed the vaccine to hospitals and pharmacies, while also setting up fixed sites at places such as football stadiums and temporary “pods,” where hundreds or thousands of doses are rushed into arms by state contractors at sites of the DEM’s choosing. Each one of those has a different appointment process.
It wasn’t until last week that officials debuted a statewide pre-registration portal for vaccine appointments. Miami-Dade County introduced a similar system.
But the state’s approach has mostly been frenzied and decentralized, producing a system where some combination of luck, internet savvy and personal connections often determines who gets a shot. That has contributed to stark racial disparities that officials are now attempting to correct by sending vaccines to Black churches.
Gated senior living facilities, often populated by more affluent people, have proved to be low-hanging fruit for state officials. The state has so far set up 11 temporary vaccine sites in communities for people over 55, giving priority or exclusive access to the residents over 65 who live there.
Helene Klein, 80, of West Palm Beach, said she had tried just about everything — she pre-registered in four different counties, searched unsuccessfully for openings at Publix pharmacies and tried to book a slot at Hard Rock Stadium.
But she finally struck gold when a friend told her about a site at Carriage Hills, a gated condo community for people 55 and over in Hollywood. A temporary vaccine site in the community was advertised on Facebook by the city and Carriage Hills in late January, but it wasn’t touted more widely by state or county officials.
Klein’s friend told her: You better go online right now.
For 24 hours, appointments were available exclusively to Carriage Hills residents. When the site opened up to the broader 65-plus population, 3,000 appointments across six days were booked within a couple of hours.
Klein was one of them. She managed to get appointments for her and her husband. “This was like a secret spot,” Klein said.
Klein said that, once she and her husband got to the site, there was almost no wait and the process moved smoothly, a contrast from many sites in Florida where confusion and long waits have been the norm.
“It was luxury vaccine,” Klein said. “This was really an exceptional experience.”
The Carriage Hills site reflected some of the strange, if unintended, effects of Florida’s approach, which has thrust politicians, faith leaders and even condo associations to the front lines of the vaccine effort.
After receiving their shots, people sat in chairs on a patio overlooking the community’s pool and lake while being monitored for reactions to the vaccine. John Wise, the Carriage Hills condo association president, introduced himself as they waited, touting the activities and amenities of the 914-unit community.
Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy also spoke to some groups who had received their shots, praising Carriage Hills and his city.
“John is the promoter, of course. He’s very proud of the condo,” Levy told the Miami Herald. “It’s OK to showcase and welcome people and be hospitable.”
The gated community and the condo pitch weren’t exactly what Klein had envisioned when she thought about getting vaccinated.
“We got in the car and I said to [my husband], ‘It’s a good thing we didn’t have to tour a unit or a house,’” Klein said, laughing. “We were picturing we were in a Seinfeld [episode]. This is not normal.”
Moskowitz, the director of the emergency management division, said enlisting public officials was a necessary facet of his agency’s effort. Without a presence in the communities, the agency is relying on local politicians and organizers to help draw a crowd.
Levy said Carriage Hills had reached out to the city about possibly hosting a site, and the city contacted the Division of Emergency Management to propose the idea. State officials conducted a site visit and the operation began within a matter of days.
Carriage Hills is a “blue collar” community, Wise said. Condos there are listed between $88,000 and $215,000 on Realtor.com.
“In an effort to try to most quickly get those folks inoculated, we made contact with [the state] and let them know of the concentration of senior residents of this community,” Levy said.
The reliance on community partners rather than public health officials reflects the approach of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has enacted a vaccine plan that has limited the role played by the Florida Department of Health. That agency has not been directing doses to certain areas or prioritizing recipients.
At a press conference Monday, DeSantis said he believed that distributing vaccines through Black churches was effective “because it’s not some wild-eyed public health bureaucrat shaking their finger at them telling them to get it. It’s someone that they trust.”
Moskowitz said his agency is making several efforts to establish a presence in Black communities, primarily in churches. The emphasis on the churches comes from the fact that the congregants are guaranteed to be from that ZIP code, he said.
Because of deeply rooted hesitancy toward vaccines in many Black communities, simply opening up vaccination sites there, with such high demand across the state, isn’t working to reach those people, Moskowitz added.
“No matter the methodology, if you don’t restrict it to a very limited group, you are getting overwhelmingly white people,” he said.
The state has so far provided 500 vaccines apiece to 26 churches across the state, according to the Division of Emergency Management, for a total of 13,000 doses. An agency spokesman did not immediately provide data on how many shots have gone to 55-plus communities.
Over 1.7 million people in Florida have received first doses of the COVID vaccine, and about 1.5 million of those specified their race. About 86,000 were Black, or less than 6%, according to state data. About 16% of all Florida residents are Black.
Shevrin Jones, a state senator who represents parts of Miami-Dade and Broward counties, said he applauds Moskowitz’s efforts to reach the Black community through churches. Jones partnered with the state last month to deliver vaccines to seniors at Koinonia Worship Center in Pembroke Park.
But he said that’s not enough to address the gaps in access.
“Some of my constituents are frustrated,” Jones said. “They want to know why, if they try to make an appointment at a facility, they can’t get it, but if they go to their church it’s more accessible.”
He added: “All Black people don’t go to church. How are we reaching those [other] people?”
This story was originally published February 3, 2021 at 3:36 PM.