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Orange County booked 7,000 COVID-19 vaccine appointments in 13 minutes after becoming the first county in Florida to open vaccine eligibility to all residents over the age of 40.

Registration is now closed. Residents must have an appointment to get the vaccine.

The Florida Department of Health in Orange County has reached capacity for COVID-19 vaccination appointments at the @OCCC. 7,000 appointments were booked by 9:13 a.m.
✅ Stay updated on future appointment openings: https://t.co/Jn3KpoVD73
✅ FAQs: https://t.co/tftQzvlZw7 pic.twitter.com/DsEQy1FthA

— Orange County FL (@OrangeCoFL) March 22, 2021

Statewide, Gov. Ron DeSantis is lowering the age of eligibility to 50 years old Monday. The governor criticized the decision to drop the age even further by Orange County.

But the governor so far hasn’t blocked the move.

“Trying to do healthy 40-year-olds over maybe finding some more seniors would not be direction that I would go,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis had previously said he would drop eligibility to 55 – but because the demand wasn’t as strong as expected, he decided to drop it to 50. He said the next step for the state would be to open up vaccine eligibility for everyone who is eligible under the FDA’s emergency use authorization.

“So the 16 or 18 up, depending on the shot, we probably can just open it up to everybody,” DeSantis said. “I can’t tell you exactly when that will happen, but I can tell you it will be before May 1.”

Miami Dade County is the next county to announce dropping the age to 40. Miami plans to make the move drop the age to 40 next week – and then drop it by 10 years each week after that until everyone is eligible.

Additionally, Florida is expanding vaccine eligibility for homebound seniors. People can email homeboundvaccine@em.myflorida.com to be put on a list to get the vaccine brought to their home.

Florida Director of Emergency Management Jared Moskowitz said the state planned to send out 1,000 nurses over the weekend to do vaccinations at home.

“Since we launched that website, we have 4,000 new people that are asking us to come vaccinate them at their home that are homebound,” Moskowitz said.

To date, more than 1,500 homebound seniors have been vaccinated by state strike teams. Today, the state is launching a new way for homebound seniors to sign up to have the vaccine come directly to them. Please email HomeboundVaccine@em.myflorida.com to put in your request.

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 11, 2021

WMFE is a partner with Health News Florida, a statewide collaborative reporting on health care.

Health reporting on WMFE is supported in part by AdventHealth.