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During an afternoon news conference at the Palm Beach County Emergency Operations Center, county officials provided a COVID-19 update for county residents. Mayor Dave Kerner, County Administrator Verdenia Baker, Commissioners Bernard, Weiss and Sachs, Fire Rescue Chief Reginald Duren, Health Director Dr. Alina Alonso, provided the following updates to the community.

The Health Care District is offering free, walk-up COVID-19 vaccinations Monday through Friday this week from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Lantana Clinic parking lot at 1250 Southwinds Drive in Lantana and Lakeside Medical Center's parking lot. The hospital is located at 39200 Hooker Highway in Belle Glade.

Local businesses and organizations interested in hosting the Health Care District's mobile vaccination clinic for their employees and clients can visit www.hcdpbc.org, click the purple “Mobile Clinic Vaccination & Community Event Request" button and submit the completed form for review and approval.

The county has been working with the state and a contractor to make sure we have as many public testing sites available as possible for our residents. Currently we have testing sites open at: the Gardens Branch Library, the Mid County Senior Center in Lake Worth, the South County Civic Center in West Delray Beach, FAU Tech Runway in Boca Raton, Lakeside Medical Center in Belle Glade and opening tomorrow will be a testing site at Gaines Park in West Palm Beach.

These sites will be closed this Monday for Labor Day and testing is free, but where available insurance or Medicare/Medicaid programs will be billed to help cover the costs of testing. Please bring your insurance card to the testing center. All of these sites and more can be found on our website, http://www.pbcgov.com. Most commercial pharmacies and physician's offices are able to do COVID testing and vaccinations for little or no cost.

The State of Florida has setup a monoclonal antibody therapy treatment site at the Westgate Park and Recreation Center in West Palm Beach. This site has the capacity to serve 300 patients per day and will be open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Earlier today, the Governor was in West Palm Beach advising that about 45,000 treatments have been given across the state and there are currently 21 sites operated by the state.

On August 17th, PBC declared a local state of emergency, this declaration was renewed on August 31st will be renewed again to take effect on Tuesday, September 7th for an additional seven days. The emergency directive, 2021-A, provides for the hospital status reporting. The county has been collecting hospital data since August 25, 2021. You can find the report here.

Palm Beach County's “Don't Miss Your Shot" campaign got rolling recently with the addition of 4 wrapped Palm Tran buses. This vaccine awareness campaign will highlight the benefits of getting your vaccine and will include billboards, radio and TV ads, besides these great bus wraps. A special thanks to Kevin Anderson, professional tennis player and Terry Bradden, an assistant defensive coach for the Kansas City Chiefs.

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