Some Dade commissioners reject offer of 100 vaccine slots
Jackson Health offered a total of 1,300 vaccination slots to be used by people selected by Miami-Dade’s 13 county commissioners. After criticism, some are declining the offer.
With demand skyhigh for COVID-19 vaccines, Miami-Dade commissioners on Friday were handed a coveted batch of appointments to fill as they see fit.
The head of Jackson Health, the county hospital system that commissioners help oversee, announced the distribution plan, saying each commissioner’s chief of staff would receive a form with 100 vaccine slots to fill.
Jackson CEO Carlos Migoya said appointments must go to people 65 or over who can prove they live in Florida.
“You’ll have a spreadsheet in which you’ll be able to provide us the names and numbers of the people” who get the appointments, Migoya said during a meeting with commissioners. He described the plan as a way to reach residents who haven’t been able to get appointments through the largely
online process that is already underway.
“It may not be enough,” Migoya said of the 1,300 appointments reserved for the 13-seat commission, which has control over some county funding for the hospital system. “Or it may be too much. We’re going to try it. If this works, we’ll do it again. Obviously subject to getting more vaccine.”
The announcement brought pushback from some commissioners.
“This worries me,” Commissioner Eileen Higgins said. Higgins, who represents Little Havana and parts of Miami Beach, said she questioned why commissioners should be put in charge of deciding who gets access to limited supplies of vaccines. “It worries me now there’s another 13 phone numbers and addresses people have in order to access vaccines. People are confused enough.”
Others said the plan made sense, given the apparent racial and income gaps when it comes to neighborhoods that are lagging in vaccination rates. Commissioner Jean Monestime, whose district includes North Miami, said his office is a frequent source of calls from people who are falling through the cracks of government services.
“To many people in the community, we are the ones they access,” he said. “It’s our offices they know.”
At the start of the online video meeting, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine
Cava previewed Migoya’s announcement about the vaccine appointment slots, which included an unknown number available to the mayor’s office.
“I’m happy to share we’ll be partnering to make additional appointments available ... in partnership with your offices and Jackson, which Carlos Migoya will tell you about in a little more detail shortly,” she said. “We will go deeper into under-served communities and provide vaccines to those who are harder to reach.”
Rachel Johnson, Levine Cava’s spokeswoman, did not say how many vaccine appointments Jackson provided the mayor’s office. She said the office “would be working directly with community organizations” to fill appointments provided by Jackson.
Johnson said the mayor wasn’t aware of Migoya’s vaccine-appointment offer until just ahead of the meeting. Levine Cava “got a call 20 minutes before the meeting” about the Jackson appointments, Johnson said. She also pointed to remarks Levine Cava made in the meeting linking the Jackson effort to outreach to “communities at great risk.”
After some public criticism unfolded during the meeting — Bal Harbour Mayor Gabriel Groisman called it a “bad idea” on Twitter, saying there are “plenty of non-profits” that could fill the appointments — the commission’s chairman said he would decline the appointments.
“I appreciate you doing this,” said Chairman Jose “Pepe” Diaz, whose district includes the Doral area. “Other people, unfortunately, will look at this and [say] we’re trying to make it political . ... You can hold off on my 100 and use them as needed for the people coming in. That’s just me.”
Higgins’ office also said she would be declining the vaccination slots, and Commissioner Javier Souto said he also didn’t want them. Commissioner Danielle Cohen Higgins also put out a statement saying her office would decline the appointments. Commissioner Raquel Regalado released a statement saying “returning this allotment is difficult” but that she would decline the “well-intentioned” offer.
Lidia Amoretti, spokesperson for Jackson, said the idea behind the offer was to tap into commission contacts with pockets of the community needing help. “We understand elected officials often have specialized knowledge of the unique, hard-to-reach populations in their districts, so we wanted to give them that opportunity to help those people,” she said.
Commissioner Rebeca Sosa called it a no-win situation. “If we say no, our constituents will get mad. If we say yes, everybody is going to get mad and say, ‘You’re trying to take advantage of this situation to benefit your friends,’ ” Sosa said, also declining the appointment slots. “The more we do, the more criticized we are.”