Mount Sinai cancels all scheduled first-dose COVID vaccines. Second doses not affected
Days after Baptist Health, South Florida’s largest nonprofit hospital system, abruptly canceled COVID vaccine appointments for hundreds, Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach is taking a similar action.
Due to restraints on the COVID-19 vaccine supply, all first-dose vaccinations booked for Jan. 23 and later are canceled. No new appointments will be taken.
Second-dose appointments are not affected, as required by the vaccine’s emergency use authorization.
According to a statement from the Mount Sinai, employees will be reaching out to those who had appointments to help them look for alternative vaccination options like pharmacies and county health departments.
“It is anticipated that those vaccination locations will become the primary means of large-scale distribution moving forward,” the hospital wrote in a statement.
Mount Sinai was the first hospital in South Florida to offer access to Miami-Dade County residents age 75 and older, followed by those 65 and older. To date, the medical center has administered over 12,000 vaccinations.
The cancellations come as top state health officials acknowledged that Florida is in a “supply-limited situation” when it comes to vaccines.
According to the News Service of Florida, Surgeon General Scott Rivkees told hospital officials Tuesday that he does not know when additional first doses of the Pfizer BioNtech or Moderna vaccines will be sent to the state or how many doses would be in a future shipment.
The state Department of Health has reported that Florida had provided 1,183,012 COVID-19 vaccinations as of Wednesday.
