https://www.miamiherald.com/news/loc...249666463.html
As Florida’s eldest residents struggled to sign up to receive their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, nearly all those aged 65 years and older in a wealthy gated enclave in the Florida Keys had been vaccinated by mid-January, according to an emailed newsletter obtained by the Miami Herald.
The management of Ocean Reef Club, located in north Key Largo, also acknowledged in the Jan. 22 message to residents that the rest of the state was grappling to get its hands on the vaccine.
“Over the course of the last two weeks, the Medical Center has vaccinated over 1,200 homeowners who qualify under the State of Florida’s Governor’s current Order for those individuals who are 65 years of age or older,’’ the message reads.
“We are fortunate to have received enough vaccines to ensure both the first and second for those vaccinated. At this time, however, the majority of the State has not received an allocation of first doses of vaccines for this week and beyond, and the timing of any subsequent deliveries remains unclear.”
Neither Ocean Reef’s media relations representative nor officials from its medical center immediately returned phone and emailed messages to answer questions about how it received so many vaccines before much of the rest of the state.
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It’s also home to many wealthy donors to the Florida Republican Party and GOP candidates, including Gov. Ron DeSantis.
In fact, the only people from Key Largo who gave to DeSantis’ political committee live in Ocean Reef. All 17 of them had given the governor contributions of $5,000 each through December 2020, according to the Florida Division of Elections.
But on Feb. 25, one resident of Ocean Reef, Bruce Rauner, the former Republican governor of Illinois and former chairman of the Chicago-based private equity firm GTCR, increased his contribution and wrote a $250,000 check.
Since DeSantis started using the state’s vaccine initiative to steer special pop-up vaccinations to select communities, his political committee has raised $2.7 million in the month of February alone, more than any other month since he first ran for governor in 2018, records show.
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For two months, reporters have asked the DeSantis administration to release the location and criteria used to distribute vaccines. The Florida Department of Health has since released some documents to the Herald/Times Tallahassee bureau, but the records do not include complete details and show that one-fourth of all vaccines went to Publix supermarkets while the state did not keep track of where the grocery store chain allocated its doses.