Gov. Ron DeSantis denied Thursday that he had anything to do with providing COVID vaccines to a wealthy, gated Florida Keys community in January ahead of other state residents.
“I’m not worried about your income bracket, I’m worried about your age bracket,” DeSantis said at a press conference in Crystal River when asked about a story in the Miami Herald that revealed almost all the senior residents of the Ocean Reef enclave in Key Largo got inoculated by Jan. 22.
The Herald report revealed that the management of Ocean Reef Club, a 2,500-acre gated community with golf courses, restaurants and its own airport, told residents that day that more than 1,200 seniors had been vaccinated over the previous two weeks. In all, 17 Ocean Reef residents had donated $5,000 each to the governor’s political committee through December 2020, the Herald reported using state records.
A month after the vaccinations Ocean Reef resident Bruce Rauner, the former Republican governor of Illinois, wrote DeSantis’ political committee a $250,000 check.
The governor said the vaccines must have come from a hospital system. The Keys Weekly newspaper reported on Jan. 21 that Baptist Health South Florida had offered vaccines to senior Ocean Reef residents, in a story that focused on the frustration of other area seniors in trying to get shots.
The Herald reported Thursday that by Jan. 19, Baptist Health announced that it was canceling all vaccination appointments booked for Jan. 20 and later and no new appointments would be taken.
A spokeswoman for Monroe County said that like all early vaccines, the doses received by Baptist Health were allocated to the hospital group by the state because it met the state’s criteria, and the hospital then decided how to distribute them.
Ocean Reef Medical Center is aligned in cooperation with Baptist Medical, and “they received the vaccines as part of the Governor’s program to vaccinate communities with a population of 65+ with a homeowner’s association and onsite medical center with the ability to administer the vaccines,” Kristen Livengood said in a written statement.
“Communities like The Villages also received the same,” she said. “The allocations were coordinated through Baptist and the State of Florida, not through Monroe County. We were aware they received them, but they were not FDOH-Monroe County allocations.”
Baptist Health and Ocean Reef did not return calls for comment Thursday.
The Herald report comes after weeks of controversy over whether the wealthy communities targeted by the DeSantis’ vaccine “pods” were influenced by political considerations.
Three communities in Charlotte, Manatee and Sarasota counties developed by Republican fundraiser Pat Neal were chosen by DeSantis for pop-up sites. Neal contributed $125,000 to DeSantis in 2018 and 2019.