JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The city of Jacksonville is hoping to eventually vaccinate more than 10,000 people each day, but as of Tuesday, it is a long way from that goal.
In an update on the vaccine distribution to members of the City Council on Tuesday morning, Chief Admininistrave Office Brian Hughes said the goal is to scale up vaccinations as quickly as possible, but there are factors that will make that challenging.
According to Hughes, 1,063 vaccinations were administered to seniors and health care workers at the Prime Osborn Center on Monday, the first day of public vaccinations.
“If you do the math, at 1,000 a day that’s not going to do it, so we need to get north of 10,000 a day to really get this thing moving,” Hughes said. “And it’s our goal to make that as fast as possible.”
In an effort to speed up vaccinations, the city said it will soon start administering vaccines at testing sites as early as this week.
“We’re working with the State Department of Emergency Management, who are preparing, probably this week — I don’t want to commit to that because it’s their operation — but probably this week, they’ll convert the state Regency testing site, at least part of their capacity there will flip to a vaccination program that will add at least another 1,000 per day,” Hughes said.
The city is also planning to vaccinate at the Mandarin Senior Center and the Lane Wiley Senior Center on the Westside. Hughes said COVID-19 testing will be scaled back at those locations and give way to vaccinations.
“There’s no better pathway for us out of this pandemic than this vaccine,” Hughes said. “And it is the priority right now for us to get as many vaccines to as many people as safely and quickly as possible.”
Part of the issue with rolling out the new vaccine sites will be cold storage for the vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
“That is probably one of the biggest impediments to distribution,” Hughes said. “I wish I could have two or three folks sitting at the tables out front. I wish I could throw an Igloo cooler at them and tell them ‘Hey if anybody walks up and wants to give it to them.’ That’s not how this vaccine works.”
Councilmember Ron Salem, the director of PharMerica-Jacksonville, a pharmacy that serves nursing homes, said he thinks it will be a while before members of the general public under 65 years old will receive the vaccine.
“We have 125,000 residents and in Jacksonville that are in that (65+) age group. So, even at four or 5,000 a day, it could be throughout January before we start dealing with other people,” Salem said.
Then there are the challenges of getting more doses of the vaccine and scheduling appointments.
Last week, phone lines crashed after thousands tried to call in to make COVID-19 vaccination appointments. The Duval County Health Department then began accepting online signups for appointments and slots filled up in just over an hour.
Heather Huffman, the interim director of the Duval County Health Department, said Monday part of the issue with scheduling is that the vaccine was released faster than the statewide reservation system which is still in development. That has left each county to figure out an appointment plan on its own.
Hughes said Tuesday the city is still trying to figure if there’s a way to create appointments that don’t involve a scheduling system.
“It may be using certain days of the week. If your birth month is a certain birth month, then you’re a Monday person. If your birth month is this, then you’re a Tuesday person, or something to that effect that helps us manage the flow, but doesn’t create another layer of technology that could disrupt the process.”
For now, the Florida Department of Health in Duval County said that new appointments for the COVID-19 vaccine will be added through the online system every Thursday at 5 p.m.
The health department said the link will change each week and will be posted on the alerts page on the department’s website: duval.floridahealth.gov.
Anyone with questions is asked to call 904-253-1140, but appointments can not be made over the phone.