The three-day clinic in Venice had little notice.
The county began making appointments for Wednesday’s clinic early Tuesday evening, just hours after the director of emergency services Richard Collins notified county commissioners in an email about a plan to get vaccines to Venice by the end of the week.
At the time Collins sent the email, he said details were scant but he expected an event later in the week.
But then the county sent out a a press release late Tuesday announcing the pop-up vaccination clinic Wednesday and letting residents know that 1,000 appointments were being made for that event.
Both Manatee County and Sarasota County have opted out of a new vaccine registration system launched by the state Friday morning.
“More than 100,000 parties have enrolled in our standby pool, and we don’t want to cause confusion locally by asking people to enroll in a separate system,” Nick Azzara, a spokesman for Manatee County, said in an email.
“Like many other Florida counties that have had an online registration up and running for several weeks,” he said, “Manatee County is opting out of the new state enrollment system.”
Florida’s new registration system for vaccination appointments was launched Friday morning to some confusion, leaving hundreds of thousands already in line in Sarasota and Manatee counties confused about where they stood.
Florida Department of Health
State health officials reported 11,423 new COVID-19 cases, Thursday, for a total of 1,687,594 infections.
The Florida Department of Health reported 202 coronavirus-related deaths, Jan. 28, increasing the statewide death toll to 26,456 fatalities.
The latest single-day positivity rate reported by the Florida Division of Emergency Management stood at 9.58% on Wednesday. Over the past two weeks the single-day positivity rate has ranged between 8.37% and 15.84%.
The Agency for Health Care Administration reports that as of this morning 6,512 patients are admitted to hospitals throughout the state with a primary diagnosis of COVID-19, including 465 patients in hospitals in Charlotte, Collier, DeSoto, Hendry, Lee, Manatee and Sarasota counties combined.
Unlike Manatee County, which uses a lottery to determine appointments, Sarasota’s system is first come, first served.
New registrants will be issued a number when they first sign up.
As of 9:15 Friday morning 104,770 were registered to get vaccinated. Sarasota had scheduled 4,072 appointments as of Thursday.
Whoever is 4,073 in line will get the next appointment.
This story comes from Aspirations Journalism, an initiative of The Patterson Foundation and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune to inform, inspire and engage the community to take action on issues related to COVID-19 vaccination efforts.