More than 100 Publix stores across Miami-Dade and Broward opened up new COVID-19 vaccine appointments Monday morning, which were quickly filled up.
Appointments at the Publix stores were fully booked not long after they were made available at 7 a.m.
Officials with the grocery store chain said the online reservation system will be open every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning at 7 a.m.
"There is more demand for the vaccine than available supply, and we understand that's frustrating," Publix said in a statement.
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People ages 65 and older must make an appointment through the online reservation system. For a full list of Publix vaccination locations: click here.
Last Friday, those slots also filled up within an hour of the site opening, even faster than on Monday. At a news conference Monday, Florida Gov. DeSantis said it was good that it was taking longer to fill the appointment slots.
"One indicator of the fact that we're making a lot of progress, is this morning when people, if you logged on to make an appointment at one of the Publix pharmacies, it took a lot longer to fill up tens of thousands of slots than it did two or three weeks ago," DeSantis said at a news conference. "I think that that means were reaching critical mass. Obviously we still have more to do."
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This will likely be an important week in the fight against COVID-19 as a third vaccine from Johnson & Johnson was being distributed, in addition to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
As far as vaccines go, health experts say all three protect against COVID-19.
"All three of them are really quite good," said Dr. Anthony Fauci. "And people should take the one that's most available to them. If you go to a place and you have J&J, and that's the one that's available, I would take it. I personally would do the same thing."
And a new executive order from DeSantis states that doctors, registered nurses and pharmacists may vaccinate people with high risk medical conditions in their own offices -- not through a state or county-run site.
