On Monday morning Dec. 14, 2020, a 31-year-old nurse at Tampa General Hospital became the first person to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in the state of Florida.
“Today is truly a historic day,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis during a press conference at Tampa General Hospital.
In all, Florida received 179,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Of those, 97,500 doses will be sent to hospitals to administer the vaccine to high-contact and high-exposure health care personnel at five Florida hospitals including Tampa General, Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, AdventHealth Orlando, and UF Health Jacksonville.
Another 60,450 doses of vaccine will be sent to CVS and Walgreens for use in long-term care facilities. Both companies are under contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to administer vaccines inside those facilities, DeSantis said.
Finally, 21,450 doses of vaccine will go directly to the Florida Department of Health.
“We will be using strike teams from Health, the Florida Division of Emergency Management and the Florida National Guard to go into long-term care facilities and administer the vaccine in areas with a high concentration of facilities,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis said that he expects to receive about 365,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine next week after it receives the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) emergency approval.
