Wealthy donors received vaccines through Florida nursing home

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Wed, 2021-01-06 09:55 — mike kraft

Wealthy donors received vaccines through Florida nursing home The invitations alarmed local officials and may have violated state and national guidelines. Isaac Stanley-Becker, Shawn Boburg Washington Post

The invitation to affluent Floridians arrived in writing and by telephone.

“He asked me if I wanted to have a vaccine,” said Ryna Greenbaum, 89, recounting the phone message she got last week. “I’m one of the people who has given him some money.”

The call, she said, had come from Keith Myers, chief executive of MorseLife Health System, a high-end nursing home and assisted-living facility in West Palm Beach, Fla., to members of the board and major donors.

MorseLife has made scarce coronavirus vaccines — provided through a federal program intended for residents and staff of long-term-care facilities — available not just to its residents but to board members and those who made generous donations to the facility, including members of the Palm Beach Country Club, according to multiple people who were offered access, some of whom accepted it. The precise number of invitations, and how many may have also gone to non-donors, could not be learned.

But the arrangement, in appearing to rely on a program run by chain pharmacies for nursing home residents and staff, may have violated national immunization guidelines, as well as state protocols, even though state officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to address sensitive matters, acknowledged that the rules have not been spelled out clearly enough by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). Vaccine doses are allocated to the state by the Trump administration but reserved for people living in long-term care facilities, who are at the highest risk of dying from covid-19.

The MorseLife episode highlights how the country’s patchwork approach to immunization against the coronavirus — leaving decisions about eligibility to state and local authorities as well as to individual providers — is creating opportunities for facilities to provide access to well-connected people while thousands of others wait in line. In Florida, some elderly residents have camped out overnight in hopes of receiving a shot. ...

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