The Sumter County Health Department received nearly 20,000 additional COVID-19 doses this past week and is distributing many of them to other local health providers to step up the vaccination effort.
The health department is sharing many of those doses with UF-Health The Villages Hospital, Florida Cancer Specialists and Langley Health Services.
“Other community partners are interested in supporting mass vaccination efforts,” said Dr. Sanford Zelnick, director of the Sumter County Health Department.
The county is also continuing to supply vaccine doses to Global Medical Response, which vaccinated 1,000 people per day during the five days a week they were in operation at Lake-Sumter State College, in Sumterville.
Global Medical Response will be moving March 8 to St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church in Wildwood, which is closer to population centers in The Villages and Wildwood, Zelnick said.
Over the past week, the Sumter County Health Department vaccinated 1,243 people at the Wildwood Community Center.
The good news is that the local spread of the Coronavirus appears to be tapering off.
Hospitalization admissions from COVID-19 infection have declined from the 60-70 in-patients at the height of the pandemic, to a daily hospitalized census now of roughly half that number, Zelnick said.
The Sumter County Health Department will use the EventBrite sign-up for the next two weeks of vaccination appointments. A total of 1,800 first-dose vaccination opportunities will be offered over multiple vaccination dates and times over the next two weeks.
“By offering more vaccinations over more days, we are hopeful that there may be more time to allow people to sign up than occurred with previous EventBrite registrations in early January,” Zelnick said.
Sign up will begin at noon Saturday, Feb. 27 at this link: https://sumtercovid19vax.eventbrite.com
If you signed up for vaccination through the state pre-registration system (either by calling 866-201-7196 or online at https://myvaccine.fl.gov/), you will be contacted to re-confirm your interest in vaccination. If you re-confirm that you are still interested, the Sumter County Health Department will continue to make appointments from this pre-registration list.
Sumter County residents are reminded to please plan to receive their second dose from the same vendor who provided them their first dose as your second dose is planned for in this manner.
