[responsive-slider id=11684]
Editor, The Beacon:
As of 2019, the Volusia Co. population was about 550,000. About 25 percent of those are over 65 years of age, or roughly 137,500 people.
The COVID vaccine currently available requires two doses to be effective. Safe to say that the county would need at least 200,000 doses to address a minimum level of demand.
No actual count of COVID vaccine doses has been released, although it seems somewhere around 2,000 doses, enough to immunize 1,000 people, may have been made available for use here. That means that, at this point, fewer than one person in 100 who is 65 years old or older could be immunized with the available supply.
This is the toilet-paper problem magnified and profoundly more significant.
I can’t figure out why people over 65 have to drive to Daytona Beach to the speedway to be immunized. Why not the nearby county parking lots? Or local city-hall lots? Or any of the vast shopping-center lots that are empty? Or why I can’t fill in consent or other required forms online? Or how vaccine delivery is scheduled or paced?
The vaccination process seems chaotic and worked out on the fly. If I just wait it out, maybe things will become clear. But waiting seems irrational when using the vaccine may be a matter of life and death, not to mention another three months in isolation.
And what about the rest of Volusia County’s residents who don’t fall in the prioritized group — 400,000 who are younger than 65?
Joan Carter
DeLand
