Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has failed to expand the state’s eligibility requirements for received coronavirus vaccine doses even as federal mass vaccination sites around the state sit idle with ample supplies, the Miami Herald reports.

Accused last week of setting up state vaccination sites to benefit political donors and Republican faithful, DeSantis is slow-walking expansion of those eligible to get vaccines even as many as more than half of the elderly population in some counties has already been inoculated.

In Miami-Dade County, for example, 57% of those over 65 have received at least one dose of one of the available vaccines, but as of Wednesday, more than 20,000 doses, designated as “first doses,” were unallocated and sitting in warehouses.  Miami-Dade County went heavily for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 and for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum in 2018.

“The goal should be: Don’t leave an empty slot,” Dr. Michael Lauzardo, an infectious disease expert at the University of Florida, said. “Our enemy is not someone coming on the wrong day. Our enemy is an empty vaccine appointment. That’s the enemy.”

In Florida, if you’re not someone who is over 65 or without an identification card showing that you work at an eligible job such as a front line health care worker, you must get a doctor’s signature on a state-mandated form to present at a vaccination site.  Even though the shots are supposed to be free, there may be a cost associated with getting a doctor’s signature, particularly if you don’t have insurance or if you don’t have a primary care physician.

“It’s just frustrating because Governor DeSantis says that he’s a small government guy who wants to get rid of bureaucracy and red tape,” state legialstor Carlos G. Smith, an Orlando Democrat, said. “And yet, in order for the most medically vulnerable Floridians to get access to the COVID vaccine, he’s requiring them to jump through all of this bureaucracy and red tape.”