ORLANDO, Fla. — Four large-scale federally supported COVID-19 vaccination sites opened in Florida Wednesday morning, including one in Orlando.

What You Need To Know

The vaccination site is open every day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Valencia College West Campus. Federal staff from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Department of Defense are supporting state and local agencies in administering the vaccine.

Up to 2,000 vaccine doses will be administered at the vaccination site daily, according to a FEMA spokesperson. The site is also supplying 1,000 vaccines daily to two satellite sites in Orange County.

By midday Wednesday, the site had only administered 500 of those doses, according to officials. The site only administered 1,800 vaccine doses in total that first day. People were getting in and out of the center in about 45 minutes. 

“I loved it," said Emma Martinez, who works with children up to 12 years old. "Easy, smooth getting in, smooth getting out, was not a wait, no line everyone, was very nice.”

Even though the federal government is supporting the site, eligibility for the vaccine still falls under the state’s priority groups.

As of Wednesday, sworn law enforcement officers, firefighters, and employees at kindergarten through 12th-grade schools who are ages 50 and up are eligible for the vaccine. That is in addition to the individuals 65 and older and frontline health-care workers who previously had been eligible.

Individuals deemed by a physician to be extremely vulnerable to COVID-19 are also eligible to be vaccinated at the state’s  federally supported vaccination sites, providing they present a Department of Health form signed by their doctor. That was a change announced Wednesday morning.

“These sites are being augmented with the appropriate medical personnel that can vaccinate extremely vulnerable individuals,” Samantha Bequer, press secretary for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, replied Wednesday morning in an email. “Beginning today, the federal sites will vaccinate individuals deemed extremely vulnerable by a physician.”