In an exclusive interview with News 6, Florida Emergency Management Director Jared Moskowitz said the general public will likely gain access to the coronavirus vaccine in early spring.
“I think that’s a March-April timeline,” Moskowitz said. “People talk about summer but I think it could happen before summer. One, because production is going to ramp up, and two, I don’t know that we’re going to see in the very beginning months a significant acceptance of the vaccine.”
Moskowitz is in charge of vaccine distribution across Florida. He said he’s concerned he’ll have to overcome politics and mixed public opinion and even mount a public awareness campaign to convince Floridians to take the vaccine.
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By the end of Tuesday, Moskowitz said all 180,000 initial doses of the Pfizer vaccine from the federal government are in place: 100,000 are now at five hospitals across Florida, including Orlando’s AdventHealth, 60,000 are at CVS and Walgreens for pharmacy teams to begin vaccinating long-term care facilities and 20,000 are in the state’s possession to assist with the LTC vaccination effort.
On Monday, Orange County Health Director Dr. Raul Pino said vaccinating LTC facilities and nursing homes will be a logistical “nightmare” because some residents are not in a condition to give consent to accept the vaccine.
Moskowitz disagreed and explained why.
“These facilities where these folks who live have to deal with this on a day-to-day basis, this is not the first medicine that these folks are getting. So they have to deal with consent,” he said. “The difference is it’s time-consuming, not really a logistical nightmare but time-consuming. So you can’t just walk in and get consent from people, there’s a significant percentage of folks that have power of attorney legal documents in which you have to secure that consent from family members or other parties. So that is time-consuming, but these skilled nursing facilities have to have a system so they’re the ones working with us and carrying of the burden.”
After LTC facilities and nursing homes receive the vaccinations, Moskowitz said the elderly outside of facilities and those with co-morbidities will receive the vaccination.
“There could be a bunch of different ways, we’ll analyze which approach the state will take,” Moskowitz said. “The state could have strike teams in very large communities, take The Villages for instance, we may partner with the hospital there, we can do that in other adult communities, call it Senior Communities to make it more accessible.”
Once the most vulnerable and those with the greatest exposure risk are vaccinated, vaccines will be available everywhere.
“CVS and Walgreens and Publix and Target and Walmart Pharmacy,” Moskowitz said. “You’ll be able to go and get shots and the state will be opening pods in partnership with cities and counties. Just like we have testing facilities, there will be mass-vaccination facilities.”
Moskowitz expects the Moderna vaccine will be approved by the end of the week and start arriving in Florida as soon as Monday. Florida will get 360,000 doses of that vaccine.
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He said doses of the vaccine are allocated weekly to all states.
“I don’t think the federal government is picking or choosing the states or fighting amongst ourselves,” Moskowitz said. “They’re not picking one over another, they’re allocating based on population growth. Obviously we just want to keep it rolling.”
Moskowitz said Floridians must continue to socially distance, wear masks and wash hands until everyone has access to the vaccine.
“Listen, that’s why even though this is the beginning of the end, there’s still a lot of time left until we get to a point where we see that community immunity,” Moskowitz said. “It’s going to be a tough time.”