OCALA, Fla. — Governor DeSantis said on Friday he plans to lower the vaccine age requirements for Floridians across the state.
“…The next change is going to be lowering the age from 65, down to either 60 or 55,” he said during a news conference in Marion County.
That bracket between 55 and 64 includes about 2.9 million Floridians, or about 13 percent of the state's population. The challenge in getting vaccines to this expanded population will be access and supply.
"Not everybody can drive, not everybody has access to transportation, not all the places...are easily accessible to certain communities,” said Dr. Jay Wolfson, professor of public health medicine and pharmacy at the University of South Florida.
DeSantis has faced tough criticism over wealthy white communities connected to campaign donations appearing to get exclusive access to vaccines. He denies those accusations and kicked off a vaccine initiative in January to target underserved minority communities across the state...
"We've done dozens and dozens and dozens of vaccine sites at churches, predominately African American Churches,” DeSantis said.
Saturday, neighbors in one of St. Petersburg’s most COVID-19 prone zip codes will get a pop-up vaccine site at Bethel Community Baptist Church. Public health leaders say as long as vaccine production and access increases, there's hope.
“Florida is making real progress in getting the population vaccinated,” said Dr. Wolfson. “And I expect that by the end of the summer, we should be there, and then we'll have to see how these variances in the virus will affect us.”
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