Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
CVS will distribute vaccine in Florida
Broward and Polk counties will get two stores each
CVS will begin giving the COVID-19 vaccine in Florida, expanding the options for people racing to get protection, particularly in the Hispanic community.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said 81 CVS Pharmacy, CVS Pharmacy y más, and Navarro Discount Pharmacy locations across Florida would get the vaccine, including 67 in Miami-Dade County.
Broward and Polk counties will get two stores each. One store will give vaccines in each of these counties: Collier, Escambia, Flagler, Hendry, Gadsden, Hillsborough, Manatee, Palm Beach, St. Lucie and Volusia.
DeSantis made the announcement Tuesday morning at the Navarro Discount Pharmacy in Hialeah, after weeks of criticism that Florida’s vaccine rollout was overlooking Black and Hispanic commu
nities.
Each of the CVS locations will be able to do 100 shots a day. Scheduling of appointments could start Wednesday at www.cvs. com/immunizations/covid19-vaccine.
CVS joins Publix, Walmart and Southeastern Grocers, which includes Winn-Dixie, in distributing the vaccine through the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program.
This week, those four pharmacies have a projected allocation of more than 130,000 doses for distribution in Florida, said Kate Grusich, spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CVS would not release the exact locations until the scheduling website opens later this week. People without online access can contact CVS customer service at 1-800-746-7287. The CVS sites will be open to any Florida resident.
DeSantis has been widely criticized over a vaccine program that has left Black and Hispanic residents with far lower rates of immunization.
With about 2.5 million vaccines given so far, 10% of white Floridians have been vaccinated compared to just 4% of Blacks and 4% of Hispanics.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel reported last month that Florida’s reliance on Publix to distribute vaccine left swaths of low-income and Black neighborhoods without easy access.
DeSantis also bristled this month at criticism that he was steering vaccine to two of Manatee County’s wealthiest ZIP codes, including a housing community tied to a wealthy Republican donor. The governor threatened to move the vaccine to other counties if local officials didn’t want them.
In recent weeks, however, the state has added Walmart, WinnDixie and CVS to the distribution team. DeSantis also announced last week that the Federal Emergency Management Agency soon will open four COVID-19 vaccination sites across the state that will give thousands of shots a day and expand the vaccination effort to minority communities.
Among DeSantis’ vocal critics has been Hialeah Mayor Carlos Hernandez. who said he wasn’t invited to DeSantis’ announcement Tuesday even though it was in his city. After DeSantis walked away from him, Hernandez addressed reporters anyway.
“He’s been treating Miami-Dade as a thirdworld country, Hialeah like a third-world country,” Hernandez told the Sun Sentinel on Tuesday afternoon. “We have not received the amount of vaccines we should have gotten.” Supply should be based on percentage of population, he said.
The CDC said the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program would begin sending vaccine to 21 pharmacy chains and eventually include a combined 40,000 locations nationwide.
The allocation for the program has now doubled to 2 million doses weekly — with 1 million doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine added to the allocation of 1 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, according to Grusich of the CDC.
Walgreens is also expected to join the lineup in Florida eventually.
The program is separate from the FEMA effort and the state’s allocation of vaccines, which is designated for Department of Health locations, hospitals, Publix and other select sites.
The latest retail pharmacy expansion comes the day after the country reached a horrific milestone: the COVID-19 death toll in the U.S. topped 500,000 Monday, all but matching the number of Americans killed in World War II, Korea and Vietnam combined. And the University of Washington projects more than 589,000 dead by June 1.