South Florida nursing home is among first in U.S. to get vaccine
Residents at a Pompano Beach nursing home were among the first to receive coronavirus vaccinations in South Florida.
Residents of one of South Florida’s skilled-nursing homes were among the first at longterm care facilities in the U.S. to receive doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine
Wednesday, as Florida got a head start on inoculating at-risk seniors while most facilities wait to get doses of the vaccine from partner pharmacies through a federal program.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, who made a brief visit to John Knox Village in Pompano Beach on Wednesday, touted Florida as the first state to begin vaccinating residents at long-term care facilities. While vaccines have been shipped nationwide since Monday, most elder-care facilities in the country signed up through the Federal Pharmacy Partnership for Long-Term Care, which launches Dec. 21.
“We are not waiting,” DeSantis said at the Broward County facility. “We will keep pushing until the job is done.”
The vaccines arrived on a truck that pulled into the 70acre property of John Knox Village at 2 a.m. Wednesday morning.
At 9 a.m., the first shots went into the arms of residents and staff at The Woodlands, one of two skilled-nursing facilities on the John Knox Village campus, which also includes independent-living apartments and villas. The skilled-nursing facilities are where the most vulnerable live,
said Kim Morgan, a spokeswoman for John Knox Village.
The group is emblematic of Florida’s nearly 71,000 sick and elderly residents who live in long-term care facilities, a population that has seen the effects of the pandemic on their wellbeing, but also on their families and loved ones who, for months, were barred from visiting.
Over the course of the day Wednesday, 90 residents and 80 staff at The Woodlands were also to receive their first dose. The facility is the only place in Broward County to receive a vaccine outside a hospital setting.
DeSantis said that he is hopeful the state will receive more Pfizer-BioNTech doses, and those would go to long-term care facilities through the state health department’s vaccination teams.
MORE DOSES TO COME
About 179,400 doses of vaccine were shipped to Florida this week, with hundreds of thousands more expected in the state in the next couple of weeks, the bulk of them coming from the Moderna vaccine that is on track to be approved soon by the federal Food and Drug Administration. Most of the doses that have already arrived, about 97,000, are going to healthcare workers and hospital staff. Nursing homes are expected to be part of that plan.
The Moderna vaccine will also go to hospitals across Florida, DeSantis said, in addition to the five hospitals that got initial shipments of the PfizerBioNTech vaccine this week.
Additional Pfizer shipments will go to long-term care facilities, DeSantis said. He said the first doses are going to Broward and Pinellas counties because of their high concentrations of facilities.
While the state is deploying its teams out of Broward and Pinellas counties to assist in the vaccination of residents at long-term care facilities, CVS and Walgreens are at this point still responsible for the majority of inoculations at long-term care facilities in the state.
A spokesman for CVS told the Miami Herald on Tuesday that the national rollout would begin on Monday.
Walgreens did not respond to a request for comments on Tuesday about its timeline.
VACCINATED IN FRONT OF CAMERAS
Vera Leip, 88, was the chosen patient to be vaccinated in front of reporters Wednesday.
The 16-year resident of John Knox Village waved as she was rolled in a wheelchair, wearing a pale pink top.
“How did you get chosen to be the patient of the day?” reporters asked.
“I don’t know!” Leip said, laughing.
Before Leip received the shot, the nurse administering showed the vial to DeSantis and said, “This is the magic.”
Then, as Leip’s sleeve was rolled up, DeSantis said, “Let her rip!”
Leip, a retired schoolteacher from Ferguson, Missouri, didn’t wince at the shot. Then, DeSantis said he would “do the honors” and rolled her back into the skilled-nursing facility. He did not take any questions from reporters.
DeSantis noted that throughout the country,
there have been increased cases in long-term care facilities in the past six weeks, Florida included.
“The quicker you can get in to vaccinate, the easier it will be for the next several months,” he said.
FUTURE SCHEDULE UNCLEAR
While nursing-home residents and staff are taking priority, it is still unclear when other assisted-living facilities and independent-living communities will receive vaccines.
Healthcare workers at Jackson Memorial Hospital became the first in MiamiDade on Tuesday to get the Pfizer vaccine. Memorial Healthcare System’s specialty pharmacy in Miramar got its first doses Monday. The Broward hospital system anticipates using 7,000 doses of the vaccine for its front-line healthcare workers and other hospital staff.
By the end of next week, the number of hospitals that have administered the vaccine could grow from five to more than 150, according to Jared Moskowitz, head of the Florida agency in charge of distributing vaccines across the state.
Moskowitz said getting vaccines to long-term care residents means a lot to the residents, who have not only been affected by the virus but also isolation and being disconnected from family.
“Each day matters in facilities like this,” he said. “I want to thank John Knox Village for partnering with us in being one of the first places in the country to be giving the vaccine to longterm care folks.”