By: Anna Luo

Last Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis finally allowed pediatricians in the state of Florida to order vaccines for very young children, following backlash from doctors and the federal government.

Unlike the rest of the United States and District of Columbia, Florida did not permit doctors to preorder vaccines for children under 5 before the federal government’s June 14th deadline, consequently forcing them to miss the first two waves of vaccine shipments. Nonetheless, this is the first sign of progress since Dr. DeSantis issued state-wide guidance discouraging the vaccination of very young children in March.

The Florida governor claims that their most recent decision does not indicate a change in policy. “We have always maintained the position that the state of Florida has chosen not to be involved in the preordering or distribution of the vaccine for children under 5,” Mr. DeSantis states. Instead, he insists this reversal is due to the new authorization of Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines for children that came from the F.D.A on Friday morning.

Despite Mr. DeSantis’s statement, Dr. Lisa Gwynn, the president of the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and associate professor at the University of Miami, does not seem to agree with the governor. In fact, she claims that the Florida Department of Health never mentioned that the F.D.A authorization would allow pediatricians to order vaccines during her conversation with the department last week.

Furthermore, she expresses her frustrations regarding the orders federal officials gave on Thursday, allowing doctors to order the necessary vaccines. According to The New York Times article written by Patricia Mazzei, “State officials had said on Thursday that doctors could order vaccines as needed. But doing so requires using a state portal that was not opened for those orders until Friday.” Despite giving their permission to order vaccines, they did not provide a clear method to do so, under the false assumption that providers could order directly from the federal government.

Nevertheless, this is a welcomed effort that the White House commends, going as far to call it a “reversal” by the Republican governor. Mr. DeSantis was subsequently sent a letter encouraging him to reverse his position on the vaccination of very young children.

Link to article: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/17/us/florida-pediatric-covid-vaccine-children-desantis.html