It’s Wednesday, January 6th - and NBC 6 has the top stories for the day.
No. 1 - Leaders in Miami-Dade County said they're working to quickly but safely administer COVID-19 vaccines to anyone over 65 who wants one.
Miami-Dade Mayor Daniela Levine Cava held a news conference Tuesday to discuss the county's vaccination plan, and was joined by the mayors of the City of Miami and Miami Beach as well as local hospital executives. Levine Cava said over 30,000 people have been vaccinated in Miami-Dade including healthcare workers and seniors 65 and older. There are more than 465,000 residents in the county who are 65 or older. She said the county is working with the state to make drive-through vaccinations possible, and said the goal is to provide tens of thousands of vaccinations weekly in the county.
No. 2 - Frustration was being expressed by some Broward residents who thought they had made it through the Department of Health website and scheduled their appointment for a COVID-19 vaccine shot, but showed up to find out they wouldn’t be injected.
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Broward Mayor Steve Geller said residents are reaching out to him pleading for help. Some are asking for special treatment, which he emphasized doesn’t exist. The Department of Health is asking for patience from the public and says those people who had appointments will get a phone call or an email. As to when the website is going to be up and taking appointments again, the department says just keep checking. Geller believes some seniors may have gotten higher expectations that what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis actually communicated when he spoke about the vaccines being given.
No. 3 - Democrat Raphael Warnock defeated Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler in a runoff election in Georgia on Tuesday, according to an NBC News projection, but control of the U.S. Senate remains unsettled.
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A pastor who spent the past 15 years leading the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, Warnock defeated Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler. It was a stinging rebuke of outgoing President Donald Trump, who made one of his final trips in office to Georgia to rally his loyal base behind Loeffler and the Republican running for the other seat, David Perdue. The focus now shifts to the second race between Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff. The candidates were locked in a tight race and it was too early to call a winner. Under Georgia law, a trailing candidate may request a recount when the margin of an election is less than or equal to 0.5 percentage points.
No. 4 - Wednesday's congressional joint session to count electoral votes has taken on added importance this year as congressional Republicans allied with President Donald Trump are pledging to try and undo Democrat Joe Biden’s victory and subvert the will of the American people.
The Republicans - a dozen senators and many more House members - are citing Trump's repeated, baseless charges of widespread fraud. They say they will officially object to the results, forcing votes in the Republican-run Senate and the Democratic-controlled House that will almost certainly fail. Nearly all of the legal challenges put forth by Trump and his allies have been dismissed by judges. The Supreme Court, which includes three Trump-nominated justices, has also denied requests to hear a pair of cases aimed at invalidating the outcome of the election in key battleground states.
No. 5 - The latest relief package offers an extension of federal unemployment benefits for Floridians who lost their jobs, but NBC 6 Responds continues to hear from people who are still waiting for benefits from the first stimulus package.
Dominic Ayesu says he applied for state unemployment benefits in March but was deemed ineligible. He says he was given the option to apply for Federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, but says that the application was flagged. By December, he says his claim sat stalled in the adjudication process for nearly five months. To see how NBC 6 Responds helped get Ayesu and others get thousands of dollars in needed benefits, click here for the story from NBC 6 consumer investigator Sasha Jones.
No. 6 - Weatherwise, temperatures stay slightly below average Wednesday across South Florida, but you'll need those sunglasses with clear skies in the area. Keep your NBC 6 app handy for push alerts on any severe weather as well as First Alert Doppler 6000.
