Doctors will decide who is at risk and should get COVID vaccine. Here’s what to know
How do you know if your medical condition makes you eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine?
Your doctor will decide, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday.
And starting Wednesday, people under 65 with a high-risk medical condition will need a physician to sign an eligibility form before they can get vaccinated at a Florida doctor’s office or pharmacy.
Florida’s Department of Health released a link to the one-page form late Tuesday night.
Basic information about the physician is required — name, phone, email, medical license number and the address of the physician’s practice. The form also asks for the patient’s name, date of birth, address and telephone number.
The form does not ask the physician to list a patient’s medical condition. It also doesn’t provide a list of eligible high-risk conditions.
Instead, physicians have to sign the form if they can certify they have a “physician-patient relationship” with the person listed on the document and have determined the patient to be “extremely vulnerable to COVID-19” and in need of the vaccine.
So, which medical conditions qualify?
It’s the doctor’s call. And a physician doesn’t have to disclose specific conditions on the form.
“We think trusting our doctors is the way to go. I think most of the physicians — they have to sign their names to this — they obviously want this to be something legitimate so I don’t think we’re gonna see any funny business with it,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a Wednesday news conference in Zephryhills.
“They’ve seen how this virus has impacted different folks, they can take a look and they can make that determination based on underlying conditions,” he said.
Previously, only hospitals were allowed to vaccinate people under 65 with preexisting health conditions that made them at risk for severe COVID complications. Then late last week, DeSantis signed an executive order allowing doctor offices and pharmacies like Publix and CVS y mas to also vaccinate individuals determined by a physician to be “extremely vulnerable to COVID-19.”
This story was originally published March 3, 2021 at 11:21 AM with the headline "Doctors will decide who is at risk and should get COVID vaccine. Here’s what to know."
