Orange wants to vaccinate medically vulnerable at convention center

County officials are lobbying the state to allow them to vaccinate medically vulnerable people at the Orange County Convention Center, which has been inoculating fewer than its capacity of 3,000 shots per day.

The state-run drive-through site has slowly expanded the number of people it can handle in a day, but demand has left open slots Orange

County officials think can be filled by “extremely vulnerable” people who, until recently, were only eligible for the vaccination at hospitals.

“We want to use the capacity we have to inoculate others in our community,” Mayor Jerry Demings said Thursday. “We hope to capture that additional capacity to allow others medically vulnerable to come, who have the ability to people to get into an automobile or be taken to that location.”

While the county awaits a response to its request to the Florida Department of Emergency Management, county health official Alvina Chu said “plenty” of appointments for vaccines are available at the convention center this weekend and next week.

The county has vaccinated about 10% of its population, a number expected to rapidly increase as school employees, the medically vulnerable and firefighters and law enforcement over 50 receive the shot. Also, the arrival of the Johnson

& Johnson vaccine is likely to increase supply to the region.

Meanwhile, the federal government has begun vaccinating as many as 3,000 per day at sites at Valencia College’s west campus, St. Cloud Civic Center and the Engelwood Neighborhood Center in east Orlando.

Demings said he’s in no hurry to revoke his executive order mandating the wearing of facial coverings, as people still are being infected and dying here from the virus. A dozen more people have died with COVID-19 since Monday.

“We still have a long way to go to reach herd immunity,” he said. “Not until we have substantially more people who are vaccinated in our community.”