Appointments Fill Quickly For Sarasota Memorial Vaccine Clinic

Updated 11:15 p.m.

SARASOTA COUNTY, FL — Sarasota Memorial Hospital will offer a one-time coronavirus vaccination clinic for the public Saturday and Sunday. The event is a partnership with the Department of Health in Sarasota County.

Registration for the weekend appointments opened at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday and filled quickly.

Using excess vaccine doses, the hospital will vaccinate between 3,000 and 3,500 people who are 65 and older, David Verinder, CEO at Sarasota Memorial said at a news conference Wednesday.

Sarasota Memorial was among the first hospitals in Florida to receive the Moderna vaccine after it was approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The hospital received its first shipment Dec. 22, according to its website.

Until now, the hospital has focused its vaccine distribution efforts on its staff, physicians and active volunteers.

Verinder said Sarasota Memorial has excess doses because some people at the hospital have chosen not to take the vaccine, which they haven’t made mandatory for staff, and because state mandates about who can receive it have changed.

This upcoming clinic is a one-time event and will deplete the vaccine stock the hospital currently has, he added. But Verinder’s hopeful that if the clinic is successful, the hospital might partner with the DOH again in the future.

Gov. Ron DeSantis made it clear recently that hospitals and other medical facilities that don’t distribute its doses fast enough will have them taken away.

"I do not want to see a vaccine sitting around not being used when you could be putting a shot in an arm," he said during a news conference in Longwood Monday.

“We did hear the gov say that. I think the worst thing that could ever happen is if we had vaccine taken out of Sarasota County and sent somewhere else,” Verinder said.

Accessing the vaccine has been a source of frustration for many Sarasota County residents since the DOH received its first shipment Dec. 28. Whenever the DOH opens registration for its limited supply of vaccine, the appointments fill quickly, often within minutes.

The demand is significantly greater than the supply, said Charles Henry, DOH health officer. On Sunday afternoon, when the agency made 800 vaccination time slots available through Eventbrite, an online ticketing platform, there were 167,000 hits to the page.

“Even if you’re very tech savvy, there are so many people trying to get those slots that it fills up rapidly,” Henry said.

As of Wednesday at 12:05 a.m., 8,805 people in Sarasota have received at least the first of the two coronavirus vaccine doses.

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Florida has launched a COVID-19 Vaccine Report that will be updated daily at www.FloridaHealthCOVID19.gov. This report includes a breakdown of who has received the vaccine by age, race, sex and county.

For more information about coronavirus and its vaccinations in Sarasota County, visit www.SarasotaHealth.org.

Residents can also sign up for Sarasota County's emergency alert system by texting "SRQCOVID19" to 888777. The county will send text alerts when vaccination registration is available.