COVID-19 Vaccine Chaos

It wasn’t easy for 74-year-old Roberta Quinn to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

Quinn, a Belle Meade resident, had to continuously refresh two South Florida vaccination websites for 30 minutes to snag an appointment at Jackson Health System. She waited in line with hundreds of people for nearly three hours to actually receive her shot.

“I got there an hour and a half early and … the line serpentined from the entrance and around the building four [times],” recalled Quinn. Her appointment was on Jan. 5, the first day Jackson Health scheduled shots for people who weren’t health care workers or recorded patients in its database. It was on that day that Jackson’s security guards attempted to turn people away, claiming that due to a glitch in the computer system, there wouldn’t be enough Pfizer doses to vaccinate the 300 people still standing in line.

“They were telling us we’d never get in … that we might as well leave. We all said ‘We’re not leaving!’ Nobody left. Eventually, the line started moving again,” Quinn said.

While standing in line, she found out that some of her fellow Floridians traveled long distances to obtain a vaccine.

“One person in line lived in Melbourne. Another was from Boca Raton. I asked them, ‘Why did you come all the way to Jackson?’ And they said they had been online looking for appointments in Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood. They couldn’t get any appointments there. So, they drove all the way down to Jackson,” Quinn said.

Some vaccine-seekers are journeying even longer distances.

There have been several reports of people traveling from other parts of the world to obtain vaccinations in Florida. One high profile example is when Argentinian journalist Yanina Latorre got her mother vaccinated while on vacation in Miami. And on Jan. 7, CTV did a special report about wealthy Canadians who, frustrated with the slow pace of that nation’s vax program, were chartering planes to Florida for the sole purpose of obtaining a vaccine.

It isn’t just foreigners. Wealthy individuals from other states in the union are migrating to Florida, too. Ana Bozovic, a real estate broker and analyst with roots in New York City, said the trend has more to do with people frustrated with higher taxes and shutdown orders.

“New York sucks right now,” Bozovic said, and confirmed that while they’re in South Florida, New York expats over the age of 65 are trying to obtain the vaccine here. “They’re not coming here for the vaccine. They’re coming here for the quality of life, and while they’re here, they will get the vaccine.”

Florida has since changed the rules, requiring valid proof of Florida residency to obtain a vaccine to clamp down on “vaccine tourism.”

As of Jan. 25, just 6% of Florida residents – 1.4 million people – have been vaccinated from a highly contagious disease that has killed around 26,000 people in this state. In Miami-Dade County, 157,972 out of 2.7 million residents have been vaccinated.

One thing is certain. Vaccines are scarce, resulting in a “Hunger Games” approach to accessing a shot. For senior citizens living within the Biscayne Corridor, that scarcity virtually ensures journeying west of I-95 to get one.

East of I-95, the Biscayne Times could find only two places within Miami-Dade that, at least at one point, were accepting appointments for vaccines for non-health care professionals: Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach and the Florida Department of Health’s Little Haiti Health Center at 300 NE 80th St. 

Thanks to the shortages, Little Haiti Health Center is, as of deadline, the only sporadically used open POD (point of dispensing) site offering COVID-19 vaccines east of I-95. On Jan. 21, Mount Sinai, which had already given out 12,000 vaccines, announced it was canceling all appointments for first doses made for Jan. 23 and thereafter.

Aventura Hospital and Medical Center at 21101 NE 28th Ave. is only giving vaccines to health care professionals due to its limited supply.

“Each state is responsible for the distribution and allocation of the vaccine. As the COVID-19 vaccines become more widely available, we will continue working with the state to expand availability in our vaccination clinic,” stated Aventura Hospital spokeswoman Vianca Larice in an email to the Biscayne Times.

Baptist Health South Florida has medical offices and an urgent care facility at 709 Alton Rd. in South Beach, yet vaccinations were only given at Baptist Health hospitals. All five of BHSF’s hospitals in Miami-Dade (West Kendall Baptist Hospital, Baptist Hospital, Doctors Hospital, Homestead Hospital and South Miami Hospital) are west of I-95. Baptist Health, which distributed 25,000 vaccine doses in South Florida and the Keys, likewise canceled appointments after Jan. 20 for first doses due to shortages.

Publicly funded Jackson Health, which had administered 49,254 Pfizer vaccines to senior citizens and another 12,324 to its physicians and employees as of Jan. 27, is taking appointments as supplies become available at three facilities, all west of I-95: Jackson South Medical Center in Kendall, the Christine E. Lynn Rehabilitation Center in Miami’s hospital district and the North Dade Health Center in Miami Gardens.

Additionally, the state provides vaccines for people with appointments at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens and Marlins Stadium in Miami’s Little Havana. The county and state provide vaccines by appointment at Tropical Park and Zoo Miami in Kendall, the West Perrine Health Center in Perrine and the Florida Health District Center in Allapattah when supplies are available.

North Miami Councilman Scott Galvin said he and his colleagues have been trying to get the county and state to open vaccination sites within his municipality. Sites suggested by the city include Florida International University’s Biscayne Bay Campus and the former Costco near Highland Village at 14585 Biscayne Blvd.

Galvin, whose city faced a financial crunch due to the coronavirus, said having at least one site within its limits will help get his constituents vaccinated.

“Everybody is just sort of anxious because, at the city level, we have very little resources to turn to do this on our own,” he said. “We don’t have medical people who work for the city. We don’t have a department of health. We are contingent on others to give us some sort of help.”

But Frank Rollason of Miami-Dade’s Department of Emergency Management, said without a hike in supply, the county won’t be opening any new open POD sites. Should that happen, he told the Biscayne Times, the former Costco site, where COVID-19 tests are conducted, is a possibility, adding that there was no traction in talks with FIU for the use of its Biscayne campus.

Giving Residents First Priority

While North Miami hopes to obtain a site, the cities of Miami and Miami Beach – both of which have their own fire departments – are doing their own vaccination drives for their respective elderly residents.

Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said his city’s fire department has been providing vaccines for homebound seniors and residents of elderly congregate living facilities since Jan. 6. During that time, the city secured 1,600 doses of the Moderna vaccine, Gelber said, and all but 500 doses are left. But rather than announcing the vaccines in public, Miami Beach targeted senior citizens who were having “problems availing themselves” of Florida’s scattered “Survivor Island” system, he said.

“We are calling them up,” Gelber explained. “A lot of them don’t have email.”

Miami-Dade County government has been quietly vaccinating homebound seniors through its Elder Care Services Department.

The City of Miami embarked on a similar but more publicity fueled path when it launched its “Miami First” vaccination program soon after municipal officials secured 3,500 doses of the Moderna vaccine on Jan. 15. Under that program, mobile Miami Fire Rescue teams fan out throughout the city’s five districts at the residences of homebound seniors or at elderly housing facilities.

Ken Russell, commissioner of Miami’s District 2, said his office has recommended sending a closed POD at the Stanley Axelrod UTD Towers in Brickell, as well as Gibson Plaza and Stirrup Plaza in the West Grove. District 5 Commissioner Jeffrey Watson said he listed Tuscany Cove Apartments in Liberty Square, Carrie P. Meek Manor Apartments in Overtown and Wynwood Elderly Apartments in Wynwood. According to John Heffernan, City of Miami deputy director of the Office of Communications, “a little less than half of the vaccine doses” had been used as of Jan. 26.

Susan Simpson, assistant city manager of Sunny Isles Beach, said her city is interested in either bringing vaccinations into that oceanfront municipality or sending its elderly residents to the hospital administering them.

“We are currently pursuing two different paths. One is to become our own open POD with the Department of Health. We signed our memorandum of agreement and we’re working toward that,” Simpson said.

The other path is to partner with Mount Sinai and reserve a set of vaccines for Sunny Isles Beach residents. The city would also utilize its shuttle bus system, which already transports passengers to the medical center, to transit 12 appointment holder per hour to that hospital. Planning continues in spite of the shortage.

“The predictability and availability of this vaccine is very difficult right now,” lamented Mayor George “Bud” Scholl.

Aventura Mayor Enid Weisman said her municipality has no special programs in place to help her city’s elderly residents get vaccinated.

“As more vaccines become available, we will explore whatever options are available at this time,” she said.

But even without the city’s help, a lot of Aventura residents have managed to get vaccinated, at least compared to many other parts of Miami-Dade County. As of Jan. 19, 4,321 people (13.3%) of those living in the 33180 zip code that covers most of Aventura and part of unincorporated Ojus were vaccinated. In the adjacent 33160 zip code that covers southern Aventura, Eastern Shores and most of Sunny Isles Beach, 3,598 people, or 9% of the zip’s population, had been vaccinated. The average income for households in both zip codes, whose residents are predominantly white, is more than $98,000 a year, according to the latest census figures.

In comparison, only 2.3% of residents in the 33161 zip code encompassing most of North Miami, whose leaders are seeking a nearby vaccination spot, had received vaccinations. This zip code represents an area with a predominately Black population and an annual mean household income of $54,555. A recent analysis by the Miami Herald revealed that affluent white communities like Aventura and Fisher Island (which has a vaccination rate of 51%) have vaccinated at higher rates than Black sectors of the county such as Opa-locka, which has a vax rate of just 2%.

Faith-Based Outreach Effort

Although affluent areas have a higher vaccination rate, Rabbi Jonathan Berkun of the Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center said many of his elderly congregants have been unable to secure vaccination appointments online. But with the help of Jackson Health, he was able to secure shot slots for 150 senior citizens, including 25 Holocaust survivors.

“We reached out to our seniors, many of whom have been isolated, homebound, quarantining and struggling through the emotional isolation of this pandemic,” Berkun said.

Esther Ross, a 96-year-old Aventura resident and survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, said neither she nor her adult children were able to get an appointment. Thanks to Berkun, Ross was able to get vaccinated at the North Dade Health Center.

“Thank God, I feel good. I can hopefully, on Feb. 3, get my second dose,” she said.

Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center was just one of 55 churches, synagogues and mosques that Jackson Health partnered with in order to obtain appointments for senior citizens who are not internet savvy or lucky enough to secure an appointment online. Thanks to those partnerships, 5,600 slots were secured for elders, according to Jackson spokeswoman Lidia Amoretti.

One of those recipients was New Jerusalem Primitive Baptist Church member Debra Dawkins, a 70-year-old retired educator who suffers from a heart condition, kidney failure and an autoimmune disease.

“Black people in this community don’t have access to a lot of things,” Dawkins told The Miami Times. “With my age and underlying conditions, I felt like I needed to get the vaccine.”

Jackson Health is also working with Sant La, the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, Center for Haitian Studies and other nonreligious groups to get seniors vaccinated.

Arthur Jackson III, senior pastor of Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Miami Gardens is grateful for the collaboration with Jackson Health, but said coordinating transportation services for dependent seniors is a challenge. Because appointments varied in time, it was difficult for his church to devise a schedule for its vehicles to transport seniors to and from the sites, while also taking social distancing guidelines into account.

He suggested the hospital system bring vaccines to the community by making churches vaccination sites, an effort already piloted by Rep. James Bush III in Opa-locka at Holy Temple Missionary Baptist Church and Miami-Dade County Commissioner Kionne McGhee at Second Baptist Church in Richmond Heights.

Pat Davis, a retired corrections officer and Antioch member since 1996, was among a few independent seniors who made the commute to a vaccination site without any problems.

“I think this has been great, because a lot of [seniors] aren’t computer literate,” said Davis, who took the initiative to inform others in her community about the vaccination opportunity.

Davis, who delivers meals to seniors on Sundays and served as transportation for others to attend Bible study events pre-pandemic, expressed interest in being a driver to help deliver seniors to vaccination sites in the future, if needed.

Rapidly Changing Events

Gov. Ron DeSantis has prioritized vaccines for residents 65 and older since the beginning, but younger people with certain underlying conditions were added to the qualified-class, although this has not become widely known. By the end of January, Jackson Health announced it would begin vaccinating those folks if they were patients of the hospital system within the past year. But which entities are vaccinating people at risk of morbidity under age 65 remains very vague and confusing.

Miami-Dade County has established 305.614.2014 as a phone line for people to make appointments at county- and state-run vaccination sites.

Even with some reforms, getting a vaccination is becoming increasingly difficult for most Miami-Dade residents. The White House press secretary recently pointed out that Florida is sitting on half its vaccines, prompting DeSantis to clarify on Jan. 26 that those doses are reserved for booster shots for people waiting for their second shot.

More vaccines should be on the way since the federal government, under the direction of President Joe Biden, has purchased 200 million more doses from manufacturers and ordered a 16% distribution increase to states by the first week of February. White House coronavirus coordinator Jeffrey Zients announced that states will now receive three weeks' advance notice of how much vaccine will be available, allowing authorities to plan and staff up for inoculation drives.

Of course, even this expected increase in supply will still fall very short of the amount states need to make a dent in the crisis. Still, Biden has now gone out on a limb by pledging that there will be enough vaccines for 300 million Americans by the end of summer. This puts a date on a return to some semblance of normal life.

Meanwhile, Jackson Health System CEO Carlos Migoya’s goal to vaccinate most senior citizens by February will not be met, due to current shortages.

“Mr. Migoya previously said if all the vaccination sites, including Jackson, continued to receive 75,000 vaccines a week, that we could probably vaccinate 50 to 60% of Miami-Dade residents age 65 and older by February,” Amoretti stated in a Jan. 15 email to the Biscayne Times. “Unfortunately, that is not possible anymore because the county is currently receiving about 20,000 a week.”

Watch for dizzying updates from all entities offering vaccines as rules and availability change faster than the weather. The unprecedented inoculation effort, riddled with pitfalls due to a disjointed and decentralized national effort, is adapting to new leadership in Washington. Everyone is building the plane as they fly it, which will lead to a bumpy landing for all of us.

Johania Charles of The Miami Times contributed to this report.