TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A month into Florida’s COVID-19 vaccination effort, less than 4% of the state’s population have actually received shots.

The Florida Senate’s Select Committee on Pandemic Preparedness and Response met for the first time Thursday and heard from state Surgeon General Dr. Scott Rivkees, who has played a key role in the state’s response.

The state’s mass vaccination effort has prioritized people at least 65 years old, and just 10 percent of Florida’s 4.5 million seniors have received the shot over the past month.

“We need nine weeks, at the very least, just to vaccinate 65 and over that are willing to take it,” Senator Jason Pizzo (D-Miami) said. “If everybody wanted to take it, it'd be 18, 19 weeks.”

The issue is supply, according to Rivkees. In a state with a population of 21 million, 250,000 doses of vaccine are arriving each week, he said.

“These are extremely tricky vaccines to manufacture, and messenger RNA is an unstable molecule, and the manufacturers, I know, they are working as quickly as they can, and we do await the day when we will have more allocation and more vaccine to advance the timetable,” Rivkees said.

Lawmakers also expressed concern about “vaccine tourism.”

“We’re talking about people who are coming into Florida to get the vaccine, using the vaccine, and heading out,” one legislator said.

“I can assure everybody that I've been working nonstop since this pandemic has begun.”

The committee is in charge of putting together bills that determine how Florida handles the pandemic, and according to the Legislature’s top Republicans, a lockdown like the one imposed last spring shouldn’t be allowed to happen again.

Lawmakers will debate those expected pandemic reform bills during the Legislature’s two-month annual session, which begins in March.