TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The COVID-19 vaccination eligibility age in Florida will be lowered to 50 beginning Monday by an executive order, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday.

DeSantis’s announcement came a day after Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said he would make vaccinations available to people 40 and older at the Orange County Convention Center, one of the county Health Department-run sites.

The governor said Friday that Demings's decision is “not his decision to make."

“Orange County is below the state average in seniors vaccinated. They’re at 63%," DeSantis said. "Trying to do healthy 40-year-olds over finding maybe some more seniors, to me, would not be the direction I would go.”

Meanwhile, Seminole County's emergency manager said his site would be following DeSantis's new guidelines of 50 and older.

For at least the next two weeks, the Seminole site at the Oviedo Mall will receive a couple thousand extra doses., Seminole County Emergency Manager Alan Harris said.

Each week, Seminole County has received about 5,800 doses, but it will now be closer to 10,000, Harris said. In Seminole County, about 64,000 people are between the ages of 50 and 59.

“We were talking about demobilizing the mobile team because there was no vaccine," Harris said Friday. "Thankfully, the state has seen a clear reason to see an additional vaccine, a couple thousand over the next couple of days so that will increase our vaccine here in Seminole County and allow us to do more mobile events."

​Harris said Seminole County has the storage space to hold more than 100,000 doses on site and could easily vaccinate at least 3,000 people a day with its current staff. County officials said they hope the state will reward them with more vaccines in the upcoming weeks.​

Demings Says He's Just Trying to Make the Best Decision for Orange County

As for Orange County, Demings said Thursday he wasn't taking the action to defy the governor or the state. 

“I don’t feel like I have to get permission to be the mayor of Orange County from Tallahassee,” he said. “We’re going to make the best decisions for our community here, using our resources.” 

The mayor reiterated his position Friday, saying in an email statement from the county to Spectrum News: 

"I am unapologetic for making a decision in the best interest of my county. Before I made my announcement that lowered the vaccine eligibility age to 40, we notified the Florida Department of Emergency Management and followed up with a letter."

In that letter, dated March 18 to Jared Moskowitz, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, Demings included "persons 40 years of age and over" among a list of populations that he wrote "will be vaccinated in Orange County."

He wrote that the county decided to do so after reviewing DeSantis's executive order on vaccinations and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services guidance on them. 

"... Orange County has made the determination to follow HHS Guidance in order to provide the greatest protection" to county and state residents, he wrote.

Demings said in the letter, which county officials provided to Spectrum News, that Orange County had vaccinated 67% of residents 65 and over.

He wrote that Orange County "has a larger amount of the younger population" compared with many other counties. He also wrote that the Orange County Convention Center had the ability to increase its number of vaccinations and "has decided to reduce the age limit required to receive a vaccine to 40 years of age or older."

The county will "continue to work collaboratively with" state and federal agencies and local partners "to meet the needs and mission of the Governor's COVID-19 Executive Orders," Demings wrote.

In his Friday statement, the Demings also said: "I was elected to work on the behalf of the citizens of Orange County and I take that responsibility seriously. In my judgment, due to the depressed demand at the convention center, lowering the age was the right thing to do."

DeSantis Still Seeks to Open Vaccinations to All Before May 1

DeSantis said Friday that the state remained on track to open vaccines to all Floridians before May.

The governor also announced Florida soon could be seeing as many as 42,000 additional Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses.

DeSantis said earlier this week the vaccine supply coming into Florida is flattening out, with the state no longer getting huge increases with each supply coming in.   

“I’m going to sign an executive order…lowering the age to 50, effective Monday,” DeSantis said. “We think we’ve done pretty good this week with the 60 to 64, but quite frankly, we think even that even on current vaccine allotments, that opening it up will be good.

“We’ll see how it goes next week, but I think we’ll definitely be opening it up to everybody, certainly before May 1.”

Spectrum News digital journalist Pete Reinwald contributed to this report.