As he gave a piano lesson at a Winter Park home last week, Jeff Licona got a question from his student’s mother: Did he want the COVID-19 vaccine?
Yes, Licona said, but he figured it would be a while before he was eligible. “I’m not over 65, and I’m not in the medical field,” he said.
The mother, who works in health care, told him, “Get in your car right now. Get in your car and follow me.”
Though perplexed, he drove behind her to Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies in Orlando. At the hospital, he learned why he was being offered a vaccine. It had a “batch that’s going to go bad,” he was told, and no takers.
So at about 7 p.m. last Tuesday, the 31-year-old music teacher from Sanford got the first dose of the Moderna vaccine.
Florida’s vaccine rollout — targeted to those 65 or older and those working in healthcare jobs — has been marked by frustration and controversy as demand far exceeds supply. Saturday, the Florida Department of Health’s Orange County office, for example, shut down its online scheduling portal because of an “overwhelming response,” with more than 35,000 appointments made in less than 72 hours.
Despite the demand, health officials have found that sometimes people do not show up for scheduled appointments, and once a vial of vaccine is open, all of it must be administered within hours or thrown out. The Moderna vaccine, for example, has 10 doses per vial and a six-hour window.
Those factors combine, in rare cases, to allow people such as Licona to get the shot.
“You put it in somebody,” said Dr. Jamal Hakin, chief operating officer of Orlando Health, which runs Winnie Palmer. “I don’t care who it is. It’s better than throwing it away.”
That made sense to Licona, who said the mother who led him to the hospital vaccine site had gotten her shot a day earlier. “To me, it was drinking the milk before it went bad,” he said.
Orlando Health, which since mid-December has been administering vaccines at six sites, said the vast majority of the about 30,000 shots it has given have gone into the arms of health care workers or older residents. But some days, some of its vaccine sites have had a handful of unclaimed doses.
When that happens, the health care system messages its employees, asking them to refer other health care workers or older residents who want a shot but haven’t yet been vaccinated and can get to the hospital quickly. As time goes by, if doses are still unclaimed, Hakim said he urges the hospital to find anyone willing.
“Give it to three anybodys,” he said.
“That’s easy math for me,” he added. “That’s very purposeful for us. It would have ended up in the garbage.”
If those three don’t meet state guidelines, Hakim said, they are still three people who are protected and likely not spreading coronavirus around the community. And unlike some other states, Florida wisely doesn’t forbid giving the shots to younger people, he said.
In New York and Oregon, health care providers have said that small numbers of vaccine doses have been tossed out because they expired before a willing patient who met applicable state rules could be found, CNN reported Sunday.
In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis prioritized getting the vaccine to front-line healthcare workers and then to those 65 and older, noting they are more at risk of complications or death should they contract the coronavirus. To date, nearly 650,000 people in Florida have gotten the vaccine, more than 348,500 of them 65 or older, according to state data.
But many older residents have found it tough to get a vaccine because not enough doses are yet available and the systems for delivering them have sometimes been confusing or overrun. They have been frustrated by crashing websites, jammed phone systems and long lines at vaccine sites.
When Licona wrote on Facebook about getting first dose of the Moderna vaccine, he got some flack from people who questioned why the hospital had given it to him. He tried to explain how it happened.
“It’s not like I took it away from someone who could have gotten it,” he said. “Be upset there aren’t enough sites, maybe not enough vaccines, not enough people to give the vaccines.”
He teaches guitar and piano to students, giving private lessons in their homes. He’s tried online lessons but found that a difficult way to teach music, so most of his lessons are in person, with masks and other safety protocols in place.
“I’m glad I got it,” he added. “I teach a lot of kids, and I’m around a lot of families.”
