Florida governor faces growing claims of vaccine favoritism

MIAMI (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and state health officials are coming under deeper scrutiny amid revelations that seniors in a wealthy enclave in Key Largo received hundreds of life-saving vaccinations as early as mid-January. DeSantis pushed back Thursday, saying a local hospital — not the state — was behind the vaccinations of more than 1,200 residents of the exclusive Ocean Reef Club in Key Largo, Florida, and that the state “wasn’t involved in it in any shape or form.” Officials from Monroe County said the affluent club’s medical center received the vaccines as part of the governor’s program to vaccinate communities with a populations of people 65 and older.