Lee Health pushing to get more vaccines for frontline workers

Is there a COVID-19 vaccine shortage or is something more to blame?

Lee Health is pleading with the state for more doses of the vaccine, and the governor’s office told WINK News on Wednesday that they sent enough vaccine to the health system to cover every worker, plus extra doses after asking them how much they need.

Lee Health CEO Dr. Larry Antonucci said 3,000 health care workers on the job in his hospitals can’t get a vaccine. The state knows it and will not send more. Antonucci said that when the state shifted its focus to sending vaccines to Publix and other community vaccination sites, health care workers got left behind.

“I really think it was just an unintended consequence that there were these groups of health care workers who fell into that gap,” Antonucci said.

So this week, the chairman of the Lee Health board of directors sent a letter to the governor and other state health leaders, asking the state to “restart vaccine allocations to hospitals. With additional vaccines, we would be able to vaccinate our health care heroes.”

WINK News reached out to the governor’s office for a response, but the health department got back to us with a statement saying, in part, “it’s simply not true for a hospital system to say that they did not receive enough vaccine for their frontline staff.”

“We did receive that number of vaccine early on, but it’s a different group of health care workers we’re talking about now,” Antonucci said.

So now, those Lee Health workers must compete with seniors 65 and over to get a shot from a place like Publix.

“In many instances, they are at the patient’s bedside at the time when they might have to be on a computer or trying to get an appointment. It’s cumbersome for them to do that,” Antonucci said.

Antonucci said nearly 5,500 frontline workers did get the COVID-19 vaccine. He also said he talked with people from the governor’s office and the director of emergency management on Wednesday and will continue to press for more vaccines for health care workers.