Gateway Mall vaccination site now administering up to 3,000 vaccines a day

Jacksonville FL — Monday, Florida’s Division of Emergency Management announced more vaccines would be available a day at the four federally supported covid vaccination sites across the state. Each site in Jacksonville, Orlando, Miami, and Tampa will be able to administer up to 3,000 first doses of the Pfizer vaccine a day. We reported last week when the vaccination site at the Gateway Mall would be able to administer up to 500 vaccines a day after the state previously announced that the site would end first doses on March 23rd.

Additionally, the four sites will remain open four weeks longer. Previously the sites would have closed on April 28th, but now they will be remaining open until May 26th. We’re told the state will use its allocations to keep these sites open longer.

The state says at this time first doses of the Pfizer vaccine are expected to end on May 4th, but that date could change. This news comes on the first day that people 40 and older are eligible to get vaccinated and a week ahead of vaccines being available for every adult.

As the state starts to make more vaccines available to more people, Governor Ron DeSantis Monday announced that he will be taking executive action soon to make sure that vaccine passports are not required to do certain activities in the state. He says showing governments and the private sector that you have a coronavirus vaccine to do things is completely unnecessary and he also has privacy concerns with them.

“I think that would provide a lot of certainty for a lot of people. I understand kind of how some folks can embrace the idea, and I’m not saying it’s all necessarily done for bad purposes, but I think ultimately it would create problems in the state.” DeSantis says.

He says the executive action would be temporary, so he’d like to see the legislature step in for a more long term approach to banning vaccine passports.

Monday DeSantis also signed into law a Covid liability protections bill. Which would prevent coronavirus related lawsuits from being filed against businesses, governments, and healthcare providers if they make a good effort to follow guidelines to prevent the spread of the virus.

Cox Media Group