Florida to receive increase in vaccines next week
Florida will receive an increase in COVID vaccine doses from the federal government next week, allowing more people to get shots, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday.
The state will receive 307,000 doses, up from 266,000 this week, he said at a news conference in Sun City Center, a community south of Tampa, where he presided over the opening of a new vaccination site.
The increase will not be enough to end the frustrations of seniors competing for a limited number of shots through constant attempts to get through phone systems or access web pages, but DeSantis said it will help.
“That’s not going to be a big difference in terms of like, ‘Oh, this is a gamechanger,’ but it is helpful,” he said. “We’re going to put it to use.”
For the past few weeks, he said, Florida has received an average of about 260,000 doses a week from the federal government.
DeSantis has said the major obstacle to delivering the vaccine more quickly is a shortage of dosages provided to the state by the federal government. The White House on Monday countered that Florida has administered only half its doses, in what turned into an early dustup between the governor and the administration of President Joe Biden.
“While we welcome this modest increase, supply remains a critical issue in vaccinating our 65 and older population,” the governor said on Twitter. “My administration will continue working hard to swiftly distribute the vaccine to Florida’s seniors, while requesting the federal government increase our supply as quickly as possible.”
The increase to Florida reflects a national effort by the Biden administration to deliver more doses to states. President Joe Biden announced Tuesday that vaccine deliveries to states will increase by 16% over the next three weeks, with plans for a larger increase in the future. He called the push a “wartime effort.”
About 10.1 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines will go out to states next week, up from this week’s 8.6 million, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Biden said the government will provide enough doses to vaccinate 300 million people by the end of the summer or early fall.
The shipment of doses will probably arrive Monday or Tuesday, although sometimes they don’t arrive until Wednesday, DeSantis said.