BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. — Brevard County is offering county employees who are fully vaccinated a financial bonus to get a COVID-19 vaccination.

The payout could be about $1,100 per employee, but they must complete the vaccination process by Sept. 24 to qualify, county officials said. Brevard County has about 1,700 total employees. 

Brevard commissioners were each able to recommend how to use $2 million from American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding, and District 3 Commissioner John Tobia offered the incentive proposal, which was unanimously approved by commissioners Aug. 3.

 “I looked at this from a fiscal perspective,” Tobia said. “More than 75,000 hours have been accumulated in time off for COVID leave. So, whatever the county can do to mitigate that, I think is definitely in the correct direction.”

According to the layout of the program, these funds would be available to “only employees who are not first responders previously compensated with hazard pay.”

A major goal of the plan is to get as many county employees vaccinated as possible because it will help protect those they serve, Tobia said.

“When you call somebody from the county or interact with someone from government, you expect for your situation to get better, and unfortunately, we have folks that are not vaccinated that have the potential and, quite frankly, the probability, of spreading disease to people that don’t have the ability, many times, to fend it off,” Tobia said.

“So this is not only fiscal, but we have to look at this from a safety perspective.”

Now that the Food and Drug Administration has granted full approval to the Pfizer vaccine, people don’t have to worry about at least one of the three domestically produced COVID-19 vaccines falling under the “emergency use authorization” status anymore. 

He said he hopes more county employees will take advantage of this program compared to a similar one offered to firefighters and paramedics. Less than a third of the county’s firefighters took the opportunity to receive $75 per shot of either the Pfizer or Moderna shot or $100 to get jabbed with the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, Tobia said.

“So I’m disgusted by them putting their own self-interests above that of the people that they’re sworn to serve,” Tobia said. “It’s scary that, in a time of need, you may be immunocompromised and the person that you call to help could potentially worsen the situation. And unfortunately, that’s the situation we’re dealing with.”

Some county employees who have already been vaccinated, like Communications Director Don Walker, said his hope was that people will not only be persuaded by the financial compensation, but also by the data coming from the medical community and local hospitals.

“I think the proof is in the pudding,” Walker said. “As it currently stands, it’s helping those that have had the vaccine that do come down with the infection, that they’re not the ones ending up in the hospital and ultimately ending up on intubation and dying from COVID.” 

As of Monday, 431 of the 455 people hospitalized with COVID-19 in Brevard County were not fully vaccinated. At Parrish Medical Center, for instance, 49 of the 55 COVID-positive inpatients are unvaccinated. The 13 patients in the intensive care unit, 12 on ventilators, are unvaccinated.

Other county employees, like Tony Camara with 321 Transit, said they’re seeing the positive effects of offering this financial incentive. He said he knows of at least 10 employees who’ve started the vaccination process because of it. 

“I think they would’ve got it anyway, but this is just pushing them a lot quicker,” Camara said. “So, yeah, the incentive is definitely helping.”

The payouts are likely to be distributed in October.