St. Johns County

Seniors struggle to book appointments for COVID-19 vaccines in St. Johns County

ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — On Thursday 14 Publix pharmacies in St. Johns County began administering the COVID-19 vaccine to those who were able to make an appointment.

As Action News Jax’s Alicia Tarancon found out, trying to book an appointment was anything but easy.

Henry Arnold lives in the Bartram Park area.

RELATED STORY: 14 Publix pharmacy locations in St. Johns County will begin to administer COVID-19 vaccines

He tried to make an appointment at Publix for his wife and his 91-year-old mother-in-law, Sonya Schwam, so they could get the COVID-19 vaccine.

When he tried to book it on the website, he was out of luck.

“Refreshing, refreshing, refreshing, taken out of the website many times,” Arnold said.

On Wednesday Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that the partnership between Publix and the state was expanding and included 14 pharmacies in St. Johns County.

QUICK LINKS: How to make a COVID-19 vaccine appointment in the Jacksonville area

The county also released 500 appointments Thursday morning on their website.

Action News Jax tried several times to see if we could book an appointment at 9 a.m., but each time we clicked on the time slot, we kept getting a page saying, “Event currently unavailable. Try waiting a minute and refresh(ing) the page.”

By 9:12 a.m. the county told Action News Jax all the appointments had been booked.

We also pulled up the Publix website, and all we got was a notice that all available COVID-19 appointments had been claimed. Additional appointments will be announced as Publix receives more inventory.

Schwam told Tarancon she just wants to get a shot so she can visit her son.

“Having dinner with him, going to lunch with him,” she said.

“It’s frustrating; it really is. We’re trying to do what we can do, and so far it’s not great at all,” Arnold said.

Action News Jax reached out to Publix to learn when more appointments would be available.

In a statement, the company said, “We reserved 30,000 appointments yesterday alone. As more vaccines become available, more appointments will be made available.”

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