ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Hundreds of thousands of Floridians approaching the deadline for their second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine will be able to get it, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday, because the state is holding those boosters in reserve.
The remark was in response to a statement made Monday by White House press secretary Jen Psaki that Florida had administered just roughly half of its doses from the federal government.
DeSantis has repeatedly said the state needs more doses, faster.
“They’ve only distributed about 50 percent of the vaccines that they have been given in Florida,” Psaki said. “So clearly they have a good deal of the vaccine. That supply will need to continue to increase as they are able to effectively reach people across the state.”
On Tuesday, the Biden administration announced states would get a boost in their COVID-19 vaccine supply next week. That would come out to about 307,000 doses, DeSantis later tweeted.
Florida has received 3.1 million doses, according to the CDC COVID Data Tracker, while 1.5 million doses have been administered.
“We’re not going to divert second doses away from seniors,” DeSantis said Tuesday in defense of why the state hadn’t administered half of the doses received so far. “If the White House is suggesting that we shouldn’t be doing that, I think that that’s not a good suggestion.”
But just last week, DeSantis said the state was not holding back second doses and previously has waffled on whether the second dose is even necessary.
In Key Largo on Friday, DeSantis told reporters there’s no warehouse of vaccines sitting around.
“We have a small amount just to be able to troubleshoot, but there’s not massive amounts,” DeSantis said. “The feds hold back the second dose, but we don’t hold back the second dose, they send the second dose the week that it’s going to be due, and that’s when it’s done.”
Asked about the conflicting statements, a spokesperson for DeSantis' office did not immediately reply.
Previously, DeSantis has gone back and forth on the necessity of a second dose. In December, he suggested one dose could be effective.
“One does of this Pfizer they’re finding is protective,” DeSantis said during a Dec. 11 roundtable in Tampa. “There was actually an article in the Wall Street Journal, someone argued you shouldn’t even do the boosters with Pfizer, just get as many doses out there.”
Last week DeSantis said the state “is committed to the two-dose regimen,” as recommended by the CDC, but added that he believed one dose was still helpful.
“[Two doses] is what the clinical trial said was 95 percent,” he said. “I do believe one dose does help — there’s places like Britain that have talked about, let’s just give everyone one dose — I think that would be helpful, but I think the two doses is better for seniors.”
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