In Manatee County, Florida, this week, thousands of people have been called to come to the affluent Lakewood Ranch development and get coronavirus vaccine. It was a call that many had been waiting for.
“We were very lucky, we got the call and we went down,” a woman told CBS News ’Jim Axelrod.
It was more than good fortune. Those who received the call lived in two specific zip codes. Their doses came through an agreement reached by the Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and the CEO of parent company Lakewood Ranch, owned by large Republican donors.
Manatee County Commissioner Misty Servia said at a county meeting that the deal skipped county protocol, allowing a select group of residents to head the vaccine line.
“So instead of this random pool where everyone gets a good shake, those two zip codes will get preferential treatment,” he said.
At a county meeting, Servia, who is also a Republican, told the courtroom that the optics are horrible.
Zip codes are two of the richest and whitest in the county and are found in the lower half of COVID-19 rates across the county.
“It’s wrong. I mean, that’s the conclusion,” said Patrick Carnegie, who runs MCR Health, the region’s largest primary care provider, which has been helping manage Vaccines against covid-19.
“We want to make sure that the process is done fairly and that it is done, you know, fairly,” he said.
According to Florida state guidelines, residents and staff of long-term care facilities, health care workers in direct contact with COVID-19 patients, including paramedics and EMS, and people over 65 years can be vaccinated.
DeSantis said Wednesday he was trying to get the vaccine to reach a high concentration of seniors. But in a county full of seniors, he never explained why doses were limited to just that group. He threatened to shoot elsewhere.
“If Manatee County doesn’t like us doing this, we’re totally fine with putting this on the counties that want it. We’re totally happy to do it,” DeSantis said.
The governor is also under control to select the supermarket chain, Publix, being the only vaccine distributor in a handful of Florida counties after a $ 100,000 donation the company made to DeSantis ’PAC re-election.
Servia now faces criticism from his own party, saying he should be “ashamed” of “taking a page out of Biden’s playbook by attacking Florida and … Governor DeSantis.”