Mount Sinai hospital is scheduling seniors to get COVID-19 vaccines in Miami Beach

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Mount Sinai hospital is scheduling seniors to get COVID-19 vaccines in Miami Beach

Ben Conarck

Some of the first South Florida seniors in the general public are likely to receive doses of either of the federally authorized COVID-19 vaccines as soon as this weekend at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach.

Mount Sinai is still vaccinating its own workers, but CEO Steve Sonenreich said his hospital has enough stock of both the Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines to move forward with inoculating the city’s oldest residents from the novel virus while that process plays out.

The hospital system will start with people over the age of 75 and lower that to people over the age of 65 once it has completed the first round of seniors in the older age bracket. Sonenreich said the vaccinations will not be restricted to Mount Sinai patients.

“We are aggressively reaching out to our patient base and to people who reside in our community, particularly those who are in senior housing facilities, so that we can reach as many people as possible,” Sonenreich told the Miami Herald on Wednesday. “Everyone knows that those are the age groups that faced the most difficult challenges with this pandemic.”

Mount Sinai is partnering with the city of Miami Beach to coordinate the logistics of getting people who don’t have their own transportation to the hospital’s campus off Alton Road.

That could potentially mean utilizing the city’s trolley system, but Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber said the plans are still in flux and that there was another call sorting out the details on Wednesday afternoon.

“We’re trying to move quickly and safely so that we can begin vaccinations for seniors,” Gelber said. “Maybe as early as Monday, we’ll have transportation systems figured out and the delivery system.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis held a news conference on Tuesday announcing that the state’s next priority group for the vaccines would be people over 65, differing with federal recommendations that said that group should be inoculated along with essential workers.

Sonenreich said Mount Sinai has reached out to thousands of people who fit that age group, much of it done electronically, and that the hospital has the supply to start scheduling those appointments.

“We want to expend our supply as quickly as possible because I don’t anticipate we’re going to get resupplied until the state sees that we need it,” he said.

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