By: Efran Zhao

Last Friday, Florida finally began to allow healthcare providers to order Covid-19 vaccines for very young children under the age of five. Florida is the final state to do so, after facing tremendous pressure from the federal government and doctors in the state.

Florida did not give permission for healthcare providers to preorder any vaccines before Friday, insisting that they wait until the Food and Drug Administration approved it.

Florida was also the only state to not request any vaccine doses from the government for

public health departments.

Doctors were unable to request vaccines on Thursday, despite state officials’ assurances, because the state portal for ordering vaccines had not yet opened. Because of this, no doses of the vaccine were sent to doctors’ offices, and the people of Florida will receive the vaccines much later than all the other states. This raised much skepticism, and as Dr. Ashish K. Jha, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, put it, “The state of Florida intentionally missed multiple deadlines to order vaccines to protect its youngest kids.”Despite this, Florida’s government still plans to have as little state involvement as possible

in the distribution of vaccines to healthcare providers for young children. They also will not be providing any vaccines through public health departments.

Mr. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, defended his administration and spoke out against

giving the vaccine to younger children, “I would say we are affirmatively against the Covid vaccine for young kids,” he said. “These are the people who have zero risk of getting anything.”