State lowers vaccine eligibility
Residents 50 and older can receive shot starting Monday as fourth wave of fears spread
People 50 and older will be eligible for COVID vaccines in Florida starting Monday, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday.
The announcement at a news conference in Tallahassee comes amid fears of a fourth wave of infections nationwide and evidence that vaccination sign-ups have been lagging at some sites.
“We think we’ve done pretty good this week with 60 to 64, but quite frankly we think that even with current vaccine allotments that opening it up will be good,”
DeSantis said. “I think the demand has been relatively modest, certainly much more modest than it was at the end of December when we were doing 65 and plus.”
All age restrictions on vaccine eligibility will be lifted soon, DeSantis said.
“We’ll see how it goes next week,” he said. “But I think we will definitely be opening it up to everybody certainly before May 1, and it may be much sooner than that.”
Age limits are coming down even faster in parts of Florida. MiamiDade County plans to lower the
age limit to 40 at county sites starting March 29, which include Homestead Sports Complex, Tropical Park and Zoo Miami. Orange County plans to do the same starting Monday for vaccinations given at the Orange County Convention Center, where County Mayor Jerry Demings said doses were going unused amid what he called “depressed demand to be vaccinated.”
But despite slacking demand at some sites, there remains competition for appointments. The governor’s announcement is likely to intensify the scramble for doses, in which people scour web pages of providers such as Walmart and CVS for appointments and go on Facebook groups to share tips on how to obtain the shots. As of Friday afternoon, websites of providers such as CVS and Walmart still had not been updated to reflect the lower eligibility age.
The governor said he dropped plans for a more modest reduction in the eligibility age after considering the projected availability of vaccine doses and the state of demand.
“We were initially going to do it at 55-plus, but we think the supply will be sufficient to do it at 50-plus” he said. “So we’re going to do that, and I think it will be good.”
The eligibility age has been dropping across the United States, as states tried to dispense shots as quickly as possible. Spurring them on has been the rise of mutated forms of the virus, such as the more contagious UK variant, which has taken its strongest hold in the U.S. in Florida.
More than 4.7 million people in Florida have been vaccinated so far, nearly a quarter of the state’s population, with the pace picking up in recent weeks with the expansion of eligibility and the increased availability of vaccine doses. Other COVID trends in Florida have been favorable, with daily case counts declining steadily since early January, accompanied by declines in hospitalizations and deaths.
The most recent eligibility expansion prior to the governor’s announcement took place Monday, when people aged 60 and up were allowed access to the vaccines.