Florida officials considered and rejected using Dollar General stores to deliver COVID vaccine in rural counties and to historically underserved urban areas.
The reason: Not enough people were going there for COVID testing.
Headquartered in Tennessee, three-quarters of Dollar General stores nationwide are located in communities of fewer than 20,000 people. It has a significant presence in Florida with 900 stores in 121 cities.
That’s more sites than Publix, at 831, or Walgreens with 820 pharmacies, both which are part of the state’s distribution of the vaccine.
Jared Moskowitz, the director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, has been coordinating the vaccine rollout.
He said Dollar General was considered to provide vaccinations but the idea was dropped after COVID testing sites at those stores failed to generate much traffic.
“We did testing there for months but those testing sites were our lowest in the state,” Moskowitz said. He didn’t say where those stores were.
Once a steady stream of dosages began to arrive from the federal government, the state then used a network of pharmacies at Walmart, with 386 Florida stores, Walgreens and supermarkets like Publix, Winn-Dixie, and Harveys. The Federal Retail Pharmacy Program coordinated the distribution of the medicine to the stores.
The sites were selected, according to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office, based on several factors identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “to ensure maximum reach” of people.
The Florida Department of Health reports nearly 3.6 million Floridians, about 16% of the population, have been fully vaccinated from the virus.
As of Monday, people age 16 and up were eligible for vaccination in Florida. Those under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian to sign a consent form.
