WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – While Gov. Ron DeSantis led a roundtable discussion on Monday, Florida’s new surgeon general said the state will issue a recommendation against COVID-19 vaccinations for healthy children.
Dr. Joseph Ladapo said the Florida Department of Health is going to be the first state health agency in the country to officially make the recommendation, but he did not say when.
After learning about Ladapo’s recommendation, Dr. Aileen Marty said her recommendation is for parents to consult with their children’s pediatrician about whether or not to get the vaccine.
“I am concerned that people are being provided misinformation,” said Marty, an infectious disease expert with Florida International University.
Ladapo’s opinion contradicts the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation for all children age 5 or older to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Pediatricians agreed health conditions such as asthma and diabetes increase the risk of hospitalization and death, but not all of the estimated 1,000 minors who died of COVID-19 in the U.S. had been diagnosed with a health condition.
“We’re kind of scraping at the bottom of the barrel, particularly with healthy kids, in terms of actually being able to quantify with any accuracy and any confidence the even potential of benefit,” Ladapo said.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration relied on a study showing the vaccine at a lower dosage for children age 5 or older was 91% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19.
“If we maintain a high level of immunity in our population, we are not going to be seeing another level of people so ill that we have to have another public health emergency,” Marty said, adding parents need to talk to their pediatricians before making a decision on vaccines.
Florida Democrats criticized Ladapo during his recent nomination for agreeing with DeSantis’ position against face mask mandates and lockdowns as public health measures to control cases during the height of the pandemic.
The roundtable on Monday was not a discussion; it was a reunion of like-minded participants.
“The purpose of us coming together today is to have something that has been missing and hard to find over the last two years, which is open discussion and transparency about some of the policies that we have seen over the last two years, so some of these topics are going to be controversial,” Ladapo said.
Watch the roundtable on Facebook Live
Governor DeSantis hosts a roundtable with physicians nationwide on ending COVID theater once and for all. https://t.co/dYRGpMEVS7
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) March 7, 2022
Here is a list of the doctors who joined DeSantis’s roundtable:
- Dr. Robert Malone
- Dr. Tracy Hoeg
- Dr. Jill Ackerman
- Dr. Christopher D’Adamo
- Dr. Shveta Raju
- Dr. Harvey Risch
- Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
- Dr. Martin Kulldorff
- Dr. Joseph Fraiman
- Dr. Sunetra Gupta