Florida to receive fewer Pfizer vaccines than expected

Florida was supposed to receive 205,000 doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine next week, but state officials now say that number has been slashed to 127,000.  

“Initially, the state of Florida was planning to receive approximately 205,000 doses in our week two allocation from Pfizer, as indicated by the federal government,” said Jason Mahon, the interim communications director for the Florida Department of Health, in a release. “We are now projected to receive 127,000 doses from Pfizer in week two. We look forward to using these doses to vaccinate critical, high-risk populations in Florida and we will continue to work with Pfizer to eradicate COVID-19 and save lives.” 

Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Tuesday that Florida would receive fewer doses than expected due to a production issue with Pfizer.  However, Pfizer put out a statement saying that it didn’t have any production setbacks. 

“Pfizer is not having any production issues with our COVID-19 vaccine, and no shipments containing the vaccine are on hold or delayed,” read the release. “This week, we successfully shipped all 2.9 million doses that we were asked to ship by the U.S. Government to the locations specified by them.  We have millions more doses sitting in our warehouse but, as of now, we have not received any shipment instructions for additional doses.”      

Florida is also set to receive 367,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine next week. An advisory panel voted to endorse the vaccine for emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It could receive its emergency use authorization on Friday. 

Marion County reported 214 cases of COVID-19 on Thursday and a positivity rate of 12.9%, the third day in a row where the county had a positivity rate above 10%.