Florida Vaccine Rollout Faces Supply Issues, Disorganized Distribution Plans
A healthcare worker prepares to administer the COVID-19 vaccine to a resident living in the Jackson Heights neighborhood at St. Johns Missionary Baptist Church on January 10, 2021 in Tampa, Florida. The Florida Department of Health is targeting the underserved populations that are most vulnerable to getting the coronavirus, specifically the African and Latin American communities. Octavio Jones/Getty Images

The state of Florida's COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been met with various challenges, ranging from supply issues, communication challenges, and disordered distribution plans.

One Florida citizen who signed up for the COVID-19 vaccine administering said that the system was so disorganized, adding that she was hoping the system would be set up so there would be a systemic distribution to it.

Linda Kleindienst Bruns registered for the program in late December, according to the New York Times report.

Bruns is 72-years-old and her immune system is being suppressed by a medication that keeps her breast cancer in remission.

She has been waiting for days waiting to hear back for her appointment.

Florida Vaccination Program

Florida has been recording an upward movement of the COVID-19 cases, with about 20,000 cases reported on Friday and more than 15,000 on Friday.

However, the vaccine program to everyone 65 and older has caused confusion, long lines, and disappointment.

"It's not in any way surprising - to anyone who followed it closely, for sure - that there would be halting kind of progress and missteps getting something of this magnitude underway initially, whether we're talking about Florida or the entire country," Dr. Leslie M. Beitsch was quoted on a report.

Beitsch is the chairman of the behavioral sciences and social medicine department at Florida State University.

About 444,000 Floridians have already received at least the first dose as of Friday. This was recorded a month after the first Food and Drug Administration approved a vaccine.

Million more of people in Florida have faced confusion, frustration, and mixed messages as the state of Florida struggles to administer vaccines to the people who need it the most, according to Tampa Bay Times report.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has proudly said that Florida is one of the first states to offer vaccines to people 65 and older who live independently.

However, some seniors have crossed county lines and fought with overloaded call centers, and crashed websites just to be included of those being administered with the first shots.

Some health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities are still waiting to be vaccinated. DeSantis originally said these group of people would be prioritized in inoculation.

Dr. Glenn Morris, director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida, said that they know they are overwhelmed but they are not seeing the smooth information being disseminated.

Morris also said that the general public does not have a good sense of what's happening, including when vaccine will be available and how.

In addition, Florida has not been clear about how many doses the state has received and where they have been sent.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data said that about 1.4 million doses had been shipped to the state of Florida. From Florida's data, it was said that fewer than 470,000 total shots had been used, including second doses.

DeSantis also broke with CDC guidelines, which would have placed essential workers ahead of healthy seniors between ages 65-74, according to Sun Sentinel report.

Dr. Marissa Levine said that local health departments do not know how many vaccines they are going to get, or when they are going to get them, until they do.

Levin is a professor of public health at the University of South Florida.