COVID-1 9 vaccines will open to all in Florida in April, DeSantis says.

Florida will drop the age for vaccine eligibility further to 55 by the end of March and then likely open COVID vaccinations to all in April, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Thursday.

The eligibility age will drop to 60 in Florida on Monday, allowing nearly 2 million more residents to get the COVID vaccine.

“We are monitoring the supply,” DeSantis said at Thursday’s news briefing in Lake City. “We have some encouraging signals ... so rest assured if you are in that 55 to 59 age bracket we want to lower that very soon as well. We may be able to do that quicker than initially anticipated.”

DeSantis announced more Walgreens pharmacies that will have doses in Florida, including four in Palm Beach County, and there will be an additional expansion of doses into Florida pharmacies next week through a federal program. The governor said production of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine should ramp up quickly, bringing a surge of doses to the state by late March.

“If the supply floodgates really open, we could be in a position sometime in April where it’s just available and people can get it,” he said.

The governor had said Wednesday that by the time he opens eligibility to all ages, every CVS and Walgreens in Florida likely would be participating in giving out vaccines.

Compared with just weeks ago, more vaccine doses already are flowing into Florida. In total, Florida received 645,180 doses of the three COVID-19 vaccines from the federal government this week, an increase of nearly 200,000 over the previous week largely due to the arrival of the Johnson & Johnson inoculations.

Some of the FEMA sites in Florida have reported unused doses on certain days, even after state guidelines expanded to allow teachers and law enforcement over 50 to be vaccinated as well as the extremely vulnerable. DeSantis said he is aware that some vaccination sites are not giving out their allotted doses. “You don’t get to 3 million seniors and not have demand soften,” he said.