BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – At Brevard County’s health department starting Monday, seniors and healthcare workers will begin receiving free COVID-19 vaccines.
The county’s communications director said 3,500 appointments through February are completely booked, and now the county may receive a second shipment of the Moderna vaccine next week.
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“Once that happens, we will reopen the appointment process and people can start applying again to get an appointment to get their first round of vaccines,” Don Walker said.
This week, the health department started taking appointments over the phone, but the county said only 900 people were able to get through before the phoneline crashed.
Then, when seniors started lining up at the health department in-person Wednesday, the county transitioned to taking appointments online.
Mike Barker from Satellite Beach said he called 150 times, and then he said he was also disconnected from the website, by the time it was too late to get an appointment.
“I just don’t think county officials, elected officials, or appointed officials spent very much time thinking through the process of something as simple as administering vaccinations,” Barker said.
The 78-year-old said he’ll try again as soon as more appointments become available.
The health department in Viera is the only place in Brevard the public can get the shot.
“We are also looking to expand those efforts seeing what we can do to get the vaccine available to folks in other places in the county,” Walker said.
The first appointments begin here in the drive-through at 1:15 Monday afternoon.