Latest Failure For Florida Governor As Shots Remain Scarce But Deaths And Infections Soar.
Palm Beach County Officials Tell Seniors Not To Use New System.
BY: STAFF REPORT
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BOCA RATON, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) — Palm Beach County is joining a growing list of counties across Florida — including Sarasota County — telling residents to stay away from the state’s new COVID vaccine reservation system.
The statewide reservation system, unveiled Friday, was supposed to streamline the process of securing a COVID-19 shot in Florida.
But Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is being slammed by health department officials across the state. Frustrated that they can’t help area residents who have been waiting for weeks, the new statewide system seems to throw that existing waitlist into chaos.
“The Florida Department of Health in Palm Beach County has announced that it is not ready to utilize the statewide covid-19 appointment system announced earlier today by the DOH state office in Tallahassee, FL,” wrote Palm Beach County officials in a Friday email blast. “The website myvaccine.fl.gov is open and available for Palm Beach County residents, but DOH-Palm Beach is advising local residents not to use it.”
“We do not want to create another waitlist,” says Dr. Alina Alonso, Director of the Department of Health for Palm Beach in a statement shared by Palm Beach County. “Our primary focus is completing our original chd50feedback emailed waitlist through the Health Care District of Palm Beach County. We prefer that the public wait until we can give them actual appointments.”
Other counties with significant senior citizen populations, including Sarasota County, also advised residents to not use the new system.
Governor DeSantis continues to be criticized for entering into an agreement with privately held Publix to become main distributor for COVID-19 shots in the state. In addition to the frustration felt by hundreds of thousands of senior citizens vying for just tens of thousands of appointments at 6 a.m. twice a week, Publix does not have locations in many underserved locations — promotion allegations that Florida doesn’t care about impoverished, often minority communities.
