COVID vaccination sites are opening across South Florida. But the planning and infrastructure required to vaccinate thousands of vulnerable people is lacking, causing history to repeat itself – long lines, long phone waits, being turned away after hours of sitting, and supply issues based upon eligibility.
The state has not provided data on the racial and ethnic breakdown of who is getting vaccinated at each site.
These are the sites administering the vaccine in South Florida. Appointments are largely booked, but slots will be added as more supplies become available.
State officials were hoping a steady stream of Black residents at a federally supported COVID-19 vaccination site in North Miami Beach would appear on Monday morning, the first day of Florida lowering its vaccine eligibility to anyone over 60.
Instead, the numbers were not what they expected – something that has been repeating itself across Florida’s biggest cities for the last two weeks.
At 11 a.m. Monday, there was virtually no line at North Miami Beach’s city-owned DeLeonardis Youth Center, which was turned into a vaccination site last week, when eligibility was still largely restricted to people over the age of 65, law enforcement officers, school staff and medically vulnerable people with the ability to secure a doctor’s note.
In an effort to close a gap between the low percentage of minority residents receiving vaccinations and Florida’s broader population, the North Miami Beach location — and others supported by the Federal Emergency Management Agency but run by the state have been established. The lines, however, have been short, and Michael Joseph, the city’s vice mayor, is one among many who believe the state needs to do much more to increase turnout through public health outreach.
Joseph said he was not aware of any efforts by the state to effectively spread the word in the city, whose population is 42 percent Black. “I know we’ve had low numbers, but I also believe we have to do a lot more when it comes to my community to get people out,” Joseph said. “And that’s going to involve canvassing. It’s going to involve reaching out to people on the phone, not just relying on social media to be the main way for people to come and get vaccinated.”
The state of Florida says the federally supported vaccination sites, set up in greater Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, and Orlando on March 3, are a success: More than 45,000 of the 101,000 people vaccinated as of Wednesday night were members of the state’s “minority population,” according to recently released official figures.
“Florida’s strategy of providing walk-up locations in predominantly minority areas is working,” said Jason Mahon, a spokesman for the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
But the state data does not reveal whether the sites are vaccinating Black residents in significant numbers because Mahon and Florida’s Division of Emergency Management director, Jared Moskowitz — who tweeted Thursday about the state’s apparent accomplishment — refused to provide any specific racial and ethnic breakdown for that statistic. All the state would say is that 45,171 of the people who got shots at the federal sites “identified as American Indian, Asian/Pacific Islander, Black/African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, or Hispanic/Latino.” No explanation was provided for grouping them all together.
As of Sunday, Florida had vaccinated roughly 7.5 percent of its Black population statewide, compared to 18 percent of whites, according to a Miami Herald analysis of state figures and Census data. The state’s decision to withhold detailed numbers from the federally supported sites makes it difficult to verify if the locations are actually improving vaccination rates for Black residents who live nearby.
“Saying white/non-white is unacceptable, especially in a place like Miami-Dade,” such a grouping renders the data “basically useless,” said Zinzi Bailey, a University of Miami professor who studies health inequities. She speculated this may have been the state’s intention. “You can’t track outcomes without data, and often it is the case that when we are not [reaching minority populations] well, there are efforts to limit the data collection,” Other public health experts agreed the state was making a mistake by grouping racial categories that way.
Of the four metropolitan areas selected for the federal pilot program in Florida, the one trailing the farthest behind in raw numbers is Jacksonville, which has the highest percentage of African-American residents. Jacksonville’s main federal vaccination hub had inoculated roughly 11,400 people by Wednesday night, compared to 25,800 in Miami, 24,600 in Orlando and 19,400 in Tampa, state figures show.
In Miami-Dade County, few Black residents seemed to show up over the last week to a temporary “satellite” site in the African-American community of Florida City.
Instead, crowds of predominantly white and Hispanic people are getting shots there. Many of those people drove in from other cities after hearing the site was expanding state vaccine eligibility rules after low responses in demand and giving vaccines to all Floridians 18 and older.
“The health inequities we’re seeing are being exacerbated by healthcare officials not realizing that the differences count,” Brown said. “The fact that you’re grouping everybody as one is neglecting the differences between communities. That’s very concerning for public health. … Even within the Black community, you have variation. Even within the Hispanic community, there are so many variations.”
Hispanics are having more success getting vaccines in Miami-Dade, where they make up more than two-thirds of the population. State data found that Miami-Dade Hispanics are getting vaccines at a higher rate than non-Hispanics, the only one of Florida’s largest counties where that is true.
Meanwhile, only 8 percent of Black Miami-Dade residents have received a vaccine, less than half of the percentage for white residents, a category that includes white Hispanics. (The analysis does not include people who did not report their race.)
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