Florida's COVID vaccination count drops by 60,000; DeSantis administration won't say why
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Florida removed tens of thousands of people from its COVID-19 vaccination tally in the past two weeks, and DeSantis administration officials refuse to explain why.
Florida’s inoculation count dropped by 60,514 people, state Health Department figures released Friday show. The state’s published vaccination total had been dropping by more than 1,000 every two weeks since April 8 in its bi-weekly COVID reports, but this was the first time it recorded a five-figure decrease.
Health Department Press Secretary Jeremy Redfern refused to explain the drop. He has said immunization totals are “preliminary” but has offered no further explanation for the declines. When asked Friday to explain the five-figure decline, he replied in an email, “The same reason as every time.”
Florida has shaved 67,337 people off its shots tally since April 8, when the unexplained cuts began.
The state Health Department has overcounted inoculations by more than 600,000 people because vaccine providers have been erroneously classifying out-of-staters as Florida residents, The Palm Beach Post reported in March. Redfern said at the time that the state had no plans to correct these numbers.
More than 15.3 million people statewide have gotten at least one shot in their arms, the state Health Department reported Friday, down from a high of more than 15.4 million reported April 8.
That tally includes more than 5.2 million people with booster shots.
Altogether, the state Health Department estimates that three in four Florida “residents” ages 5 and older have gotten at least one dose, while one in four are boosted.
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COVID spreading the most among the youngest children in Florida
COVID is spreading faster among Florida’s youngest children than older kids, the Health Department stated Friday, days after it was reported that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration chose not to preorder vaccines for kids younger than 5.
About 13% of COVID tests conducted in the past week on children in that age group came back positive, health officials reported. That’s higher than kids ages 5 to 11, or anyone 12 to 19. The rate, however, was lower than the statewide overall level of 17.2%.
The federal Food and Drug Administration on Friday authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID vaccines to kids under 5, but those shots will reach Florida after everyone else in the country. Pfizer’s vaccine is for children 6 months through 4 years; Moderna’s vaccine is for 6 months through 5 years.
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The DeSantis administration chose not to preorder shots from the federal government.
“The risks outweigh the benefits, and we recommend against,” DeSantis said Thursday at a news conference in Miami.
Physicians statewide will now get these vaccines later than everyone else across the nation because of the DeSantis administration’s deliberate inaction, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said Friday. "Because of the (Food and Drug Administration’s) decision this morning, we have begun shipping vaccines to children’s hospitals and pediatricians in every state in the country except Florida.”
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Pediatrician: 'Something was suspicious' when he tried to order shots
Previously, physicians could preorder shots through the state Health Department. But when Palm Beach County pediatrician Dr. Tommy Schechtman tried to place orders over the past couple of weeks for the under-5 shots, he said that option was missing from the department’s online system. “It was always a smooth process. Something was suspicious.”
When Schechtman first learned that the governor had decided against preordering shots, he became furious. “Despicable,” he said Friday in an interview
Although children are less likely to die of the disease than adults and elderly people, Schechtman noted that its debilitating effects — long COVID, for instance — are still unknown. “The governor and surgeon general are playing with the lives of children,” he said.
He originally planned to offer the shots starting next week. Now that will be delayed.
Pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens and certain medical facilities that serve the poor will receive the first batch of these vaccine doses from the federal government. State-run county health departments won’t.
Pharmacists often lack the training and experience pediatricians have with administering shots to scared, fidgety kids, Schechtman said, making the job tougher.
Most Floridians live in counties where masks indoors are urged
About 92% of Florida residents live in counties where the CDC recommends masking indoors and on public transportation due to surging numbers of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations. Only in Hawaii is that percentage bigger.
About 69.5 million Americans live in counties the CDC classifies as places where the disease poses a high risk of straining local health-care systems. Florida accounts for 28% of those people, the biggest share of any state.
The only places in Florida not in the high-risk zone are the central Panhandle; Putnam and St. Johns counties, both south of Jacksonville; and parts of southwest Florida that include Collier County, home to Naples.
In high-risk counties, COVID infection tallies have soared past 200 cases for every 100,000 residents in the past week. Over that same time period, either COVID hospitalizations have risen past 10 per 100,000 or at least 10% of hospital beds are occupied by patients who tested positive.
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Cities, counties and schools in Florida cannot enforce indoor mask requirements because of executive orders and laws DeSantis signed last year. In April, a federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump struck down the CDC’s mask requirements for trains, planes and buses.
Medical staff across Florida tended to 3,212 COVID-positive patients, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department reported Friday. This week was the first since Feb. 23 that hospitalizations were above 3,000.
The share of adult COVID-positive patients in intensive care units was about 11%, around the same level it’s been since late April, and among the lowest since the start of the pandemic.
DeSantis said in January that his administration would report patients who came to the hospital with COVID separately from those who tested positive while there. That has yet to happen. Throughout the pandemic, he has speculated that the severity of the disease has been overstated in Florida due to patients and victims who come to emergency departments for non-COVID reasons, but are diagnosed with the disease while hospitalized.
Florida’s death toll grew by an average of 253 people each week since the state Health Department published its last COVID report June 3. That’s the highest level since April 8.
Unlike previous coronavirus waves, the current one fueled by subvariants of the omicron strain has not led to a four-digit weekly surge in fatalities.
Vaccinations, combined with widespread prior infection and availability of COVID treatments, appear to be helping ward off severe illness.
The main omicron strain may have already infected 56% to 61% of Floridians, the CDC estimates. The federal agency arrived at those figures by examining a sample of 1,685 antibody tests collected from commercial labs Feb. 1-21. It’s unclear how much protection these specialized antibodies grant against severe illness from an omicron subvariant infection.
Florida’s official death toll stood Friday at 75,096 residents. But that excludes more than 3,000 victims who died in 2020 from March to October and for which physicians listed the disease as a main cause of death, a report released June 6 by the Florida Auditor General revealed.
Cases grow an average of nearly 75,000 every two weeks
The state’s COVID caseload grew by an average of 74,379 each week over the past two weeks, the highest weekly average since Feb. 11.
But in some places, infections declined. Palm Beach County logged an average of 4,807 new cases each week since June 3, lower than the previous average of 4,942.
Florida health officials have documented 6,345,663 infections since the start of the pandemic. That’s an undercount because positive at-home tests aren’t included in official sums nor are people who feel no symptoms and therefore don’t get tested.
Chris Persaud is The Palm Beach Post's data reporter. Email him at cpersaud@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida COVID vaccines: How many people have been vaccinated?
