MANATEE COUNTY- Governor Ron DeSantis toured Manatee County’s Drive-through vaccination site today, and says the site could be in line for more vaccine doses as supply chains improve.
“The current dosing that we have will run out today,” Emergency Management Chief Jack Sauer said. “We will put all of our doses that we’ve received in arms today at this drive through site.”
At the end of the day Thursday, 6,000 Manatee County Seniors will have been vaccinated. Governor Ron DeSantis says 4.1 million eligible people are trying to get one of 250,000 doses they’re receiving weekly from the federal government.
“We’ve asked can you double our allotment for next week DeSantis said. “Because we have the infrastructure now.”
DeSantis says well-run sites like Manatee County’s can ramp up quickly, and those sites will receive priority for new doses.
“If someone can get the shots in the arms particularly of seniors let’s facilitate that,” DeSantis said. “What we don’t want is someone to sit on the shots for two or three weeks so there’s vaccine being moved around.”
Manatee is continuing to make improvements. Vaccine Standby registration will go live at 10 PM tonight.
“You don’t have to rush to do it,” DeSantis said. “Because you do it, it goes into a lottery, and then they do it, just to try to decompress the crush you see on these systems when things like that first go online.”
Volunteer Nurses also partnered with the county to administer vaccines.
“They’re here today in our community,” Jake Sauer said. “At our drive through today, volunteering their time to assist our paramedics, relieve our paramedics who’ve been doing vaccinations.”
DeSantis expects vaccinations to increase steadily as supply chains improve.
“We’re going to do significantly more shots this week than last week throughout the state,” DeSantis said. “And as long as we get more supply, we’ll do more shots next week than we’ve done this week.”
For more information on how you can sign up for the Manatee County vaccine lottery online or by phone you can visit mymanatee.org/vaccine.
