Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and state health officials came under deeper scrutiny amid revelations that seniors in a wealthy enclave in Key Largo received hundreds of life-saving vaccinations as early as mid -January, giving ammunition to critics who say the Republican governor is favoring wealthy constituents over ordinary Floridians.
The revelations were the latest example of wealthy Floridians getting earlier access to coronavirus vaccines, even as the state has lagged in efforts to get poorer residents vaccinated.
DeSantis pushed back Thursday, saying a local hospital — not the state — was behind the vaccinations of more than 1,200 residents of the exclusive Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo, Florida, and that the state “wasn’t involved in it in any shape or form.”
Officials from Monroe County, home to Key Largo, said the affluent club’s medical center, which is an affiliate of Baptist Health Hospital, received the vaccines through the hospital as part of the governor’s program to vaccinate communities with a populations of people 65 and older. County spokeswoman Kristen Livengood said the allocations were coordinated through Baptist and the state of Florida.
Revelations about Ocean Reef residents getting vaccinated were first reported by the Miami Herald.
The inequitable distribution of the COVID-19 vaccines is becoming a public relations challenge for the governor. Of the 3.2 million people who have received one or two doses of the vaccines, less than 6% have been Black, when they make up about 17% of the total population.
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried joined Democratic U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist in calling for federal officials to probe the DeSantis administration’s vaccine distribution programs.
During a Thursday press conference at the Florida Capitol, Fried called on the FBI’s public corruption unit to launch an investigation.
“If this isn’t public corruption, I don’t know what is,” Fried said, noting what she said was a pattern.
“Give campaign contributions big dollars, get special access to vaccines — ahead of seniors, ahead of our teachers, ahead of our farmworkers and so many of our residents here in our state of Florida who are scared and who are wanting vaccines.”
Last week, Crist, a former Florida governor, asked the U.S. Department of Justice to look into possible favoritism in the state’s distribution of the vaccines, asserting that DeSantis were benefiting “political allies and donors, over the needs of higher-risk communities and existing county waitlists.”
Both Crist and Fried are considering campaigns to oppose DeSantis in next year’s gubernatorial election.
The Ocean Reef Club, a senior community in Key Largo, had more than 1,200 homeowners vaccinated through their second dose by late January, according to a message to community members by the management obtained by the Miami Herald.
Those vaccinations came at a time when “the majority of the state has not received an allocation of first doses,” the management noted.
In recent weeks, other reports have surfaced of wealthy retirement communities getting exclusive access to vaccine doses through pop-up vaccine sites. Democrats have criticized him for choosing those places, but the governor’s office has noted that more than half of them have been in Democratic stronghold counties of Broward and Palm Beach. Supporters of DeSantis say he has also coordinated clinics with faith-based groups in underserved areas.
After Publix was made the sole distributor of vaccines in Palm Beach County in late January, the mayors of predominately Black farming communities in the area urged the governor to reconsider, and the state set up a vaccine station shortly after.
Even so, DeSantis during a Thursday news conference applauded the hospital network for going to the exclusive club in the Keys to vaccinate more seniors.
“My view is if you are 65 and up, I am not worried about your income bracket. I am worried about your age bracket because it’s the age, not the income, that shows the risk,” he said at the news conference. “I think it was good that they did it. I support the hospitals doing that.”
The pastor of a Hispanic church with 400 members in Homestead, Florida, not far from Key Largo, says he feels his and some other areas have been forgotten in the vaccination campaign due to technological and language barriers.
“Many people here work all day and they are not up to date with where to go and how to sign up,” said Miguel Carrillo, pastor of Iglesia Roca Fuerte.
Carrillo says many of the Guatemalan and Mexican members of his church suffer from conditions that would make them extremely vulnerable to the virus such as diabetes but they don’t have primary doctors to provide them the note they need to head to one of the federal sites.
“I wish they would give these workers a chance,” he said.
(AP)
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4 Responses
More AP Democrat Party lies. There is no hint of corruption and nothing to investigate. All counties and hospitals got the same treatment; some of them chose to accept it and some rejected it. That’s on them, not the state. If fewer blacks have chosen to get vaccinated, that is their choice and has nothing to do with the state.
> less than 6% have been Black, when they make up about 17% of the total population
That alone shows how SICK this article is (“sick” because it puts politics above health). By common consensus seniors are the high risk category to be given priority. The fact is that a much higher percentage of seniors are non-Black than the percentage of non-Blacks in the “total” population – so the statistic that Blacks “make up about 17% of the total population” (notice the word “total”) is criminally misleading. In other words, the statistic that is needed is the statistic of the senior population, where Blacks make up much less than the 17%. Aside from that, there is also the matter that even among the seniors, non-Blacks can afford facilities like nursing homes (where vaccination is more easily and rapidly organized) at a higher rate than Black seniors.
Then there is the matter of the term “life-saving vaccinations”? When Cuomo (among others) pontificated that he would refuse to accept any Trump vaccine, did the media report that refusal as a refusal to accept any Trump “life-saving” vaccine?
But in any case, the simple facts are that in order to get the vaccine distributed as fast as possible it is necessary to make use of any existing distribution system and institutions that already exist – and not surprisingly the “rich” already have a wider and better distribution and institution system already in place than the “poor”.
As example:
> “Many people here work all day and they are not up to date with where to go and how to sign up,” said Miguel Carrillo, pastor of Iglesia Roca Fuerte.
Well, as a pastor, why doesn’t he advise those working people on the matter?
> Those vaccinations came at a time when “the majority of the state has not received an allocation of first doses,” the management noted.
Something hypocritical about such a complaint when so-called “undocumented” (a.k.a. “illegal”) immigrants are given vaccines before legitimate U.S. citizens. Aside from that, the vaccine has a limited shelf-life and instead of throwing out the vaccine the way New York (among others) have done due to their policy of “this group gets first” (even when none of the group are available before he vaccine expires), it was distributed where possible as fast as possible.
And one more point. The Black community has a much stronger aversion to the vaccine (“they don’t want to take it”) than the non-Black community. Certain Black leaders are spreading the word among the Black communities that the vaccine given to Blacks is different than the vaccine given to non-Blacks, where the former is designed to kill off the Black population. Even aside from that, and even those Blacks who don’t follow such ideas, there is still the aversion of this being a “Trump” vaccine, or at least a “government” vaccine from a government they still don’t trust (or even hate) even under Biden (especially when the governor is hated for being a Republican – Republicans being someone they are taught to hate and distrust).