To the Editor:
After doing a little bit of research, it seems that the governor is not living up to seniors in The Villages on his promise to distribute vaccines in The Villages. If one looks at the senior populations in surrounding counties, you find that they have a smaller percentage of seniors and in many cases much fewer seniors in total. However, vaccine distribution is based on total population of a county. Not the NUMBER of seniors in a county.
For example, Alachua County (Gainesville) has a higher population than Sumter. (268,043 vs. 132,420) (https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sumtercountyflorida)
However, Alachua has a much smaller senior population (39,280 vs. 77,068) But, Alachua County has received 81,333 doses of vaccine vs. 53,912 for Sumter. (https://data.theadvertiser.com/covid-19-vaccine-tracker/florida/sumter-county/12119/) Why is that? Why is the governor distributing vaccines by total county population and not by the number of eligible recipients in a given county? Sumter County should be getting a much bigger allocation than it is. County officials have been doing a great job but they’ve been dealt a bad hand by the governor.
David Laluk
Village of Lynnhaven
