Florida Democrats call for feds to investigate Gov DeSantis vaccine distribution msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
MIAMI (AP) Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and state health officials came under deeper scrutiny amid revelations that seniors in a wealthy enclave in Key Largo received hundreds of life-saving vaccinations as early as mid -January, giving ammunition to critics who say the Republican governor is favoring wealthy constituents over ordinary Floridians.
The revelations were the latest example of wealthy Floridians getting earlier access to coronavirus vaccines, even as the state has lagged in efforts to get poorer residents vaccinated.
DeSantis pushed back Thursday, saying a local hospital not the state was behind the vaccinations of more than 1,200 residents of the exclusive Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo, Florida, and that the state “wasn t involved in it in any shape or form.”
A DeSantis spokeswoman meantime called it a manufactured narrative with political motivations.
Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried said she was asking the FBI to investigate DeSantis after news reports suggesting he gave special treatment to an ultra-exclusive South Florida neighborhood. I will not stand by and let our vaccines be used as political game, and to go . to the highest bidders while so many of our Floridians are suffering, like my grandmother, like my mother, like your parents and grandparents, she told reporters Thursday morning.
This week, the Miami Herald reported that Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo, home to 17 people who each made political contributions of $5,000 to DeSantis last year, gave both doses of COVID vaccine to 1,200 people there in mid-January.
Opponents say a troubling pattern in vaccine distribution has emerged showing favoritism toward the wealthy counties that are home to Republican donors.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday, speaking on the first day of the 2021 Legislative Session in Tallahassee, Fla. (Tori Lynn Schneider/Tallahassee Democrat via AP)
WASHINGTON (CN) Amid new reports that coronavirus vaccines made their way to a wealthy Florida enclave back in January, a state official invited the FBI on Thursday to investigate whether Governor Ron DeSantis has been playing favorites in the pandemic.
“If red carpet vaccine distribution for political contributions isn’t public corruption, I don’t know what is,” Nikki Fried, the state commissioner of agriculture and consumer services, tweeted this morning after a press conference in the Florida capital.