PALM BEACH, Florida -- With seniors clamoring for the COVID-19 vaccine, the wealthy residents age 65 and up in Palm Beach appear to be at the front of the line.
Are some of the richest residents in the county getting preferential treatment? Yes and no.
About 1,000 doses were allocated to the town of Palm Beach, but the county’s health director said it was only because the island had a plan in place. She also said that vaccine was expected to be doled out to other municipalities this week. Those shots, though, never arrived.
“People got upset because Palm Beach got it. It was, ‘Oh my God, only the rich and famous get the vaccine,’ but that wasn’t the case at all,” said Dr. Alina Alonso.
And for every one of the doses given, whether it be to a millionaire or a nurse, there is a booster shot that must be administered within less than a month.
But members of Palm Beach Country Club appear to have indeed used their connections to get vaccinated. The New York Post reported that those connected with New York developers Bill and David Mack were able to go to the health clinic at a West Palm Beach long-term care facility to get their shots.
The Post reported that friends of the Macks also flew in from New York in order to get the vaccine at Joseph L. Morse Health Center. The center is on the campus of the long-term care facility MorseLife Health Systems.
David S. Mack is listed as a vice chairman for MorseLife. Both brothers are listed as directors for Palm Beach Country Club, where annual memberships start at $100,000.
MorseLife would not return phone calls for comment. A person answering the phone at the Palm Beach Country Club said there was no comment.
Bill and David Mack did release a statement through a spokesperson to The New York Post, confirming that friends of theirs at the country club were able to get vaccinated at a “not-for-profit healthcare institution.”
“David and Bill Mack were asked to assist a not-for-profit healthcare institution with the organization of its vaccination campaign,” according to the statement.
“Some vaccine recipients may have been Palm Beach Country Club members, but substantially fewer than your sources indicated, and this was not a targeted effort to vaccinate club members.”
A retired West Palm Beach nurse, who didn’t want her name published out of fear of being sued, said the Macks’ vaccine grab is inexcusable when there are frontline healthcare workers at hospitals still waiting for the shots and others, from cancer patients to minorities, are left at the back of the line.
“It just makes me sad,” she said. “People will do anything if they have money. Money buys. Money speaks.”
How the town of Palm Beach got its hands on 1,000 doses of vaccine before any other municipality is a bit more complicated.
Alonso, the state health director for Palm Beach County, said the plan was to start inoculating seniors at various municipalities through fire-rescue EMTs.
However, when it became apparent to Alonso that there would not be enough vaccine to distribute, she put the plan on hold “because we had a limited amount of vaccine and I didn’t want to run out.”
However, her department had already issued the vaccine last week to the island because it was the first municipality ready to put needles in arms.
“I take responsibility for what occurred on the town of Palm Beach,” Alonso said.
The county started out with 20,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine and expected its next shipment to be of similar quantity, which could be doled out to cities throughout the county. Instead, the shipment that came in last week was only 4,000 doses.
Currently, the target remains healthcare workers who have yet to be inoculated. The retirement communities of Kings Point and Century Village also were allocated vaccine with the help of the health department to administer the shots but since then state strike teams have taken over, Alonso said.
The health department is vaccinating close to 500 people per day, totaling about 13,000 residents so far.
The town of Palm Beach filled 1,000 appointments in 30 minutes and administered the shots and then came back to the health department on Monday for more, Alonso said.
The town, however, told the Palm Beach Daily News on Monday that it had administered 800 shots. Palm Beach Mayor Gail Coniglio did not return a phone call for comment.
“I can see how it would look like Palm Beach got preference,” Alonso said. “It was not favoritism or anything like that. They were just the first ones ready.”
Responding to questions about how the town was able to secure vaccines so quickly, Deputy Town Manager Jay Boodheshwar said Monday that there was already an infrastructure and a system in place to distribute the vaccines.
“We have been working on preparing to be a closed distribution pod for at least a couple of months,” he said. “Paramedics have been trained, and software was procured. When we got word vaccines were available, we needed to demonstrate that if we were provided, we would be able to administer them ASAP.”
A quick glance at census data shows that from an epidemiological perspective the town of Palm Beach is just one big nursing home. A whopping 66 percent of the town’s 8,800 residents are 65 years or or older.
The frenzy among seniors was caused when Gov. Ron DeSantis said the elderly in the state would be next in line to get the vaccine by the end of January. His statement now appears to be a bit of irrational exuberance.
“Because of the little bit of vaccine that we are getting, at this moment, we cannot do a large scale operation to be able to vaccinate over 400,000 seniors that we have,” Alonso said.
Alonso said it would take months not days but that she assured the task will get done. But she worried seniors may think they are immune once they get vaccinated.
They must still get a booster, still wear their masks and still practice social distancing as the antibodies build up and others in the general population are inoculated.
“We are not saying to the seniors, you got your vaccine, you can go out and party now,” Alonso said. “That’s very, very important they understand that.”
Palm Beach Daily News Reporter Adriana Delgado contributed to this report.