By: Kathy Wu

Due to the rising number of coronavirus cases and widespread pressure from the government to medical officials, Florida has recently authorized coronavirus vaccine doses for young children up to age five this Friday.

However, the governor of Florida, Republican Ron Desantis, has undoubtedly defended his position time and time again of preventing vaccines to be delivered to children under age five. On Thursday, Mr. DeSantis defended his refusal to preorder any vaccines for state-run medical facilities, including those under state control, such as county-level public health offices. “I would say we are affirmatively against the Covid vaccine for young kids…the people who have zero risk of getting anything,” he said.

Florida is the only one of the 50 states in the U.S. that did not permit health care providers to preorder Covid vaccines ahead of the federal government’s June 14 deadline. As if that wasn’t enough, the state missed the order deadline for the second wave of vaccines that was inattentively scheduled to be arriving a week later. “The state of Florida intentionally missed multiple deadlines to order vaccines to protect its youngest kids,” said Dr. Ashish K. Jha, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator.

The ambitious action of sending vaccines for young children to Florida benefits a group of experts working at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) and the agency’s director.

Following this delay, people continue to go back and forth with arguments on the case, and a congressional subcommittee overseeing the coronavirus response sent a letter to Governor Desantis, urging him to reverse his acclaimed position.

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/06/17/world/covid-19-mandates-vaccine-cases#florida-pediatric-covid-vaccine-children-desantis