Wealthy enclave received COVID vaccine in January before much of the state
As Florida’s eldest residents struggled to sign up to receive their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, nearly all those aged 65 years and older in a wealthy gated enclave in the Florida Keys had been vaccinated by midJanuary, according to an emailed newsletter obtained by the Miami Herald.
The management of Ocean Reef Club, located in north Key Largo, also acknowledged in the Jan. 22 message to residents that the rest of the state was grappling to get its hands on vaccine doses.
“Over the course of the last two weeks, the Medical
Center has vaccinated over 1,200 homeowners who qualify under the State of Florida’s Governor’s current Order for those individuals
who are 65 years of age or older,’’ the message reads.
“We are fortunate to have received enough vaccines to ensure both the first and second for those vaccinated. At this time, however, the majority of the State has not received an allocation of first doses of vaccines for this week and beyond, and the timing of any subsequent deliveries remains unclear.”
Neither Ocean Reef’s media-relations representative nor officials from its medical center immediately returned phone and emailed messages to answer questions about how the site received so many vaccines before much of the rest of the state.
Ocean Reef Club is an ultra-exclusive neighborhood that is arguably one of the highest-security private communities in the nation.
According to Sotheby’s International Realty, it has more than 2,100 members who live there either full or part time. It is also where the very wealthy and where dignitaries, including President Joe Biden, come to stay when they visit the Florida Keys.
REPUBLICAN DONORS LIVE THERE
It’s also home to many wealthy donors to the Florida Republican Party and GOP candidates, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
In fact, the only people from Key Largo who gave to DeSantis’ political committee live in Ocean Reef. All 17 of them had given the governor contributions of $5,000 each through December 2020, according to the Florida Division of Elections.
But on Feb. 25, one resident of Ocean Reef, Bruce Rauner, the former Republican governor of Illinois and former chairman of the Chicagobased
private equity firm GTCR, increased his contribution and wrote a $250,000 check.
Since DeSantis started using the state’s vaccine initiative to steer special pop-up vaccinations to select communities, his political committee has raised $2.7 million in the month of February alone, more than any other month since he first ran for governor in 2018, records show.
Spokespeople for the governor did not immediately respond to emailed and telephone messages requesting comments about the Ocean Reef vaccinations.
By hand-selecting the communities, DeSantis allows residents to bypass state and local vaccine registration systems and go directly through their community organizations, like the Medical Center at Ocean Reef.
Last month, a high-end community developed by Republican fundraiser
Pat Neal was chosen by
DeSantis to host a pop-up vaccination clinic near Bradenton. Only people from two ZIP Codes were eligible to receive the vaccine at the Lakewood Ranch site, and names were chosen by Manatee County Commissioner Vanessa Baugh, who included herself on her vaccine selection list.
DeSantis chose two other Neal developments for pop-up sites in Charlotte and Sarasota counties. Campaignfinance data shows that Neal, a former state senator, donated $125,000 to DeSantis’ political committee in 2018 and 2019 but is not reported to have made a contribution since.
CRITICISM OF VACCINE DISTRIBUTION
The effort has brought scrutiny from DeSantis’ critics as the state’s vaccine distribution appears to be inequitable. By the end of February, only 5.6% of those who’ve been vaccinated in the state are Black, even though Black people account for 17% of the state’s population, state records show.
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, the state’s highestranking Democrat, called for an investigation into the Lakewood Ranch clinic and asked DeSantis to suspend Baugh from the Manatee County Commission.
The governor’s spokeswoman, Meredith Beatrice, defended the popup clinics, telling the Sarasota Herald Tribune last week that of the 15 pop-up clinics targeted to senior communities, nine were in Broward and Palm Beach counties, “which are not known for being Republican strongholds.”
DeSantis has denied that he is selecting locations for the senior clinics based on politics.
“There’s some people who are more upset at me for vaccinating seniors than they are at other governors whose policies have killed seniors, and that is a joke,” DeSantis said after the Bradenton Herald’s first Lakewood Ranch stories emerged.
Meanwhile, U.S. Rep, Charlie Crist, a St. Petersburg Democrat, who, like Fried, is seen as a potential rival to DeSantis in the 2022 governor’s race, has called for the U.S. Justice Department to investigate how the state allocates its vaccines.
For two months, reporters have asked the DeSantis administration to release the criteria used to distribute vaccines. The Florida Department of Health has since released some documents to the Herald/ Times Tallahassee bureau, but the records do not include complete details and show that one-fourth of all vaccines went to Publix supermarkets while the state did not keep track of where the grocerystore chain allocated its doses.
The state has yet to release the written criteria it is using to determine which communities receive the special popup vaccine clinics.
Taking a deeper look at the types of COVID viruses circulating in some hospital patients, researchers at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine have identified a scattering of genetic footprints, with one viral culprit out-competing the others and surging to become the predominant strain.
That version of the virus, called B.1.1.7, or the “U.K. variant,” has been in Florida since late last year, scientists agree, and is destined to become the main strain here, perhaps as soon as this month.
Researchers at UM examined nearly 500 samples of the COVID virus, the bulk of them from patients at MiamiDade County’s Jackson Health public hospital facilities, and found that
B.1.1.7 caused more than 25% of the infections. The U.K. variant is thought to be more infectious but not genetically distinct enough from the original virus to cause concerns about vaccines not working.
But the team also identified more troublesome variants, including three samples of a COVID virus first identified in Brazil that contains the same mutation as a South African variant that derailed the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine trial in that country.
They discovered rare variants first sequenced in Saudi Arabia, Aruba and Israel, as well as domestically identified strains — two samples of the California variant, and one sample of a strain first identified in New York.
“Our first couple of sequencing runs, we were surprised to see such a diverse array,” said Dr. David Andrews, a pathologist and University of Miami professor who is leading the research. “... We found the two California variants right away.”
Somewhat reassuring is that the most concerning version of the virus, the Brazilian variant, or P1, is being detected at what Andrews called “a very low prevalence.”
Researchers in Brazil and scientists from Imperial College London have recently suggested that the strain that took off in the Brazilian city of Manaus over the winter was spurred on largely by reinfections, and may be more transmissible.
Five cases of that variant have been confirmed in Florida so far, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added one case of the South African variant on Monday.
Florida has for several weeks led the country in confirmed cases of the U.K. variant, about 600, or 25% of the country’s 2,400 confirmed cases, according to the CDC.
But the real number of cases caused by the U.K. variant is likely much higher, about 25% to 30% of new cases in Florida, according to projections from the private commercial lab, Helix. Those estimates are in line with the findings from UM in hospital patients.
“We know from the experience in the U.K. that this variant is more readily transmissible from person to person, so it is very concerning,” said Mary Jo Trepka, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Florida International University.