Pop-up clinics for Fla.’s VIPs
Many helped wealthy cut in line for the vaccine
The USA TODAY Network found at least 150 yacht clubs, gated communities and other exclusive venues got priority access to shots.
When Florida threw open the door for seniors to get COVID-19 vaccines, hundreds camped out overnight, some bundled up in lawn chairs in the January cold to score a shot.
Thousands more waited in digital lines for their number to come up in county-run vaccine pools.
For some lucky Floridians, getting a vaccine was as easy as hopping in their golf carts and rolling down to the clubhouse.
Pop-up clinics offering exclusive vaccine access sprouted at country clubs and a long list of golf course communities stretching from Delray Beach to Lakeland and Ocala. Special clinics dotted the west coast, from the Tampa exurbs to Naples, where shots were given at a clubhouse in a community with two private beaches and homes that have sold for more than $14 million. A pair of yacht clubs in Martin County and the Florida Keys even secured special vaccine access.
A USA TODAY Network analysis of state and local government records, news reports and information from private developers found at least 150 communities that landed vaccine pop-ups or priority access to doses. Data provided by the state is incomplete, so there could be more.
Gov. Ron DeSantis was personally involved in coordinating two pop-up clinics in Manatee and Charlotte counties in communities developed by his donors, while other clinics were held in developments where donors had shelled out big contributions to the governor.
It’s often unclear how certain communities were chosen.
Community leaders at a number of developments that received state-run private vaccine clinics said there was no formal application process; they simply were aggressive in lobbying state and local government officials, and it paid off.
“We just started emailing everybody,” said Lyn Reitz, association manager of Sun City Center, a sprawling Hillsborough County community with 11,500 residents where more than 4,000 people were vaccinated at a pop-up.
DeSantis denied that the wealthy, including his donors, get preferential access and said he directs doses to counties with the highest senior populations.
Many of Florida’s clinics were in moderate or lower-priced senior communities, including public housing,
Gov. Ron DeSantis was personally involved in coordinating two pop-up clinics in Manatee and Charlotte counties in communities developed by his donors.
mobile home parks, senior condominiums and apartment complexes.
Some of these less affluent communities have significant political clout because of their sheer size or other factors, such as belonging to trade associations that gave big campaign contributions to the governor.
Certain communities being allowed to cut in line early, when vaccine supply was extremely limited, rankled many Floridians.
“It just smacks of favoritism,” said Ross Edlund, 69, who drove nearly two hours to Miami from his home near Naples to get the shot while his neighbors at an upscale community across the street received their own private vaccine pop-up clinic.
Early push for exclusive clinics
Florida’s vaccination effort was barely two weeks old when DeSantis took the stage at the Kings Point Golf & Country Club in Delray Beach on Dec. 30 and declared that “we have a responsibility to stand by those folks who’ve done so much to make our state and country what it is today.”
DeSantis had traveled to the gated 55-and-older community in Palm Beach County to kick off a vaccine pop-up.
Florida’s vaccine strategy has been controversial from the start, when DeSantis bucked federal recommendations, moving quickly to make the vaccine available to all seniors.
The state received its first doses Dec. 14, and nine days later, DeSantis issued an executive order allowing anyone 65 and older to get vaccinated, touching off a scramble by state and local government officials.
Florida Department of Health officials worked with local governments to set up vaccination sites at parks, malls, fairgrounds and stadiums, accessed through online registration systems.
Even before many of these sites were up and running, state and local officials launched more targeted efforts: POD, short for point of dispensing, clinics were set up at churches, community centers and other locations. Those at housing developments often were limited to residents, allowing them to avoid the wait at big vaccination hubs.
The USA TODAY Network requested data from the governor’s office, the state Division of Emergency Management and the Florida Department of Health, which coordinate vaccination distribution, on PODs at senior housing communities. The list they provided includes 22 clinics at housing developments, a fraction of what occurred.
Records requests were sent to health departments and county governments in many of the largest counties. Most directed inquiries to the DOH office, did not respond or said they had few or no such clinics at housing developments.
Two agencies that did provide data on clinics in Pasco and Hillsborough counties reported dozens of clinics in each county.
DeSantis touted the pop-ups as an effective way to reach large numbers of seniors.
The list of communities that received pop-ups includes some of the largest 55-and-older developments in the state, from Sun City Center in the Tampa area to On Top of the World in north Central Florida and Solivita between Lakeland and Orlando.
On Jan. 27, DeSantis kicked off the clinic at Sun City Center. On Feb. 11, he spoke at a pop-up at Kings Gate, a 55and-older community in Southwest Florida.
On Feb. 17, as DeSantis prepared to hold a news conference at the Lakewood Ranch clinic, public outcry about pop-ups erupted, sparking weeks of debate about vaccine favoritism.
Florida’s vaccine strategy has been controversial from the start, when DeSantis bucked federal recommendations, moving quickly to make the vaccine available to all seniors.
Favoritism complaints
DeSantis rejected criticism that he played politics with vaccines as a false narrative driven by the “corporate media” and his political opponents. Yet among the early critics were Republican allies of the governor on the Manatee County Commission, responding to community outrage about the Lakewood Ranch clinic.
Rex Jensen, president and CEO of Lakewood Ranch developer Schroeder-Manatee Ranch, spoke with DeSantis about hosting a clinic, text messages show. Jensen contacted Manatee County Commission Chair Vanessa Baugh for help arranging the event.
Manatee County has a vaccine lottery system that distributes doses randomly to people who preregister. The Lakewood Ranch pop-up restricted the lottery to people who live in two wealthy ZIP codes.
On Feb. 16 and 18, Republican county commissioners questioned Baugh about the clinic, complaining that it favored privileged communities.
“What happened over the last few days undermines everything I’ve been telling my residents,” Commissioner Kevin Van Ostenbridge said. “Favoritism was shown, and that erodes people’s trust in their government.”
Schroeder-Manatee Ranch donated $2,000 to DeSantis during his 2018 campaign.
The “insinuation” that pop-up clinics “are established for political purposes is completely baseless,” DeSantis spokeswoman Meredith Beatrice said in February. The governor’s office did not respond to questions for this article.
Another DeSantis donor who received a clinic is developer Pat Neal, who said in a news release that the governor “reached out to ask for assistance” in coordinating a vaccination event. Neal served on DeSantis’ transition team and contributed $125,000 to his political committee.
Neal staged the clinic at Kings Gate, a southwest Florida community where Neal builds homes. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune revealed that Neal’s company invited residents of other communities to participate in the Charlotte County clinic, including two upscale Sarasota County communities that Neal is developing: the Boca Royale Golf & Country Club in Englewood and the Grand Palm development in Venice.
Yacht clubs and private beaches
Though the governor has tapped developers of upscale communities to host some vaccine clinics, wealthy enclaves obtained special access to doses through other means.
Piper’s Landing Yacht & Country Club near Stuart in Martin County got 270 of its residents, more than half, vaccinated Jan. 7, according to TCPalm.com. A pair of homes are for sale in Piper’s Landing for more than $1 million, including a 5,300-square-foot, $1.4 million house overlooking the St. Lucie River with a private sauna and a boat lift that can accommodate a 40-foot vessel.
The Yacht Club residents received their doses because the local health department diverted some of its weekly allotment to private health care companies, including Mobile Medical, whose owner told TCPalm.com that the clinic was set up at the yacht club because 70 residents are Mobile Medical patients. The other 200 yacht club members who received leftover shots were just lucky, the community’s general manager said.
Around the same time that Piper’s Landing residents got vaccine access, so did residents of the Ocean Reef Club in the Keys.
According to the Miami Herald, a newsletter sent Jan. 22 to Ocean Reef Club residents reported that more than 1,200 of them had been vaccinated. A home under construction in the club’s Sunrise Cay neighborhood is listed at $19.9 million.
Seventeen Ocean Reef Club residents gave $5,000 to DeSantis. Bruce Rauner, a resident and former Republican governor of Illinois, cut a $250,000 check to the governor’s political committee shortly after the club’s residents were vaccinated, according to state records.
DeSantis said during a news conference that the state was not involved in getting the vaccine doses to Ocean Reef, but the hospital that distributed the doses disputed that.
Another upscale community that received special vaccine access is Pelican Bay in Naples, a 6,500-home development with two private beaches and a private tram system with eight stops.
Pelican Bay is home to more than two dozen DeSantis donors, including one who gave $25,000.
Members of the community said they didn’t ask for the vaccine clinic. They said the North Collier Fire Control & Rescue District, which covers Pelican Bay, initiated the effort, something the fire district’s deputy chief confirmed, according to the Naples Daily News and The News-Press.
A common refrain from those hosting the state-run clinics is that there hasn’t been a formal process to request them.
The process of securing a state-run vaccine pop-up clinic remains something of a mystery in Florida. Even community leaders who landed clinics aren’t quite sure how they did it.
Solivita Club Manager Sheri Wollschlager said there was no formal application process. She and others in the community contacted everyone they could think of, including the governor’s office and Polk County commissioners.
“We have a lot of residents who have time on their hands,” she said. “I’m sure they were emailing the governor. I personally emailed the governor.”
Other community managers told similar stories.
In the absence of a state plan for vaccine distribution, something DeSantis has shrugged off by noting other states quickly had to change their plans, those seeking pop-ups appealed to whomever they could.
“We did go to our county commissioner,” said Mark Bufano, operations manager for the Groves Golf and Country Club in Pasco County.
Officials that followed the state’s lead conducted pop-ups in housing communities ranging from senior apartment complexes in Tampa to country club communities in Polk, Pasco and Collier counties.
Seeking equity through clinics
Exclusive vaccine clinics that benefit privileged groups can erode public trust, especially when supplies are scarce, but some public health experts said pop-up clinics can be good for reaching the underserved.
“These pop-up clinics may be a good strategy, depending on where you place them,” said Jorge Salinas, a hospital epidemiologist and clinical assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Iowa who specializes in infectious diseases.
“If we are going to go out of our way to vaccinate special groups, it should be those who experience more barriers to care,” he said.
Hillsborough County in the Tampa Bay region targeted senior apartment complexes, many of them public housing or in low-income neighborhoods.
Mike Napier, who runs the DOH office in Pasco County north of Tampa, said he was under pressure to get vaccines out quickly and saw pop-ups in housing developments as a way to do that, including in golf club and country club communities.
“I know there was some question about why are you going into gated communities versus non-gated communities,” Napier said. “Initially ... it was a matter of who was ready.”
Other counties had few or no popups at housing developments.
“The problem with pop-up clinics is that it gives the perception of favoritism,” said Marissa Levine, a professor of public health and family medicine at the University of South Florida who leads the school’s Center for Leadership in Public Health Practice.
Levine said what happened in Florida is the perfect example of why states need to create a transparent framework for vaccine distribution to ensure the public has trust in the system and those involved in vaccine distribution are on the same page.
“There’s a significant ethical concern here,” Levine said.