By: Summer Chu

In Florida, because of pressure from the public, the state government relented on Friday and allowed doctors and health officials to order vaccines for children under five. They were the 50th and last state to do it.

Florida missed both the preorder for the first waves of the doses that ended on June 14th and the preorder for the second wave of doses. “The state of Florida intentionally missed multiple deadlines to order vaccines to protect its youngest kids,” Dr. Ashish K. Jha, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, told reporters on Friday. This represents Governor DeSantis’ plans for the vaccines and his personal opinion on vaccinating young children.

Governor DeSantis only finally allowed health officials to preorder vaccines once the Food and Drug Administration authorized the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines for very young children on Friday morning. Even though he has allowed this, DeSantis still insists that he isn’t backing down in response to the White House.

In a statement, Bryan Griffin, a deputy press secretary for Mr. DeSantis, said characterizing Florida’s policy as a backing down was “patently false.” “The state of Florida does not recommend the vaccine be administered to healthy children,” he added.

The governor displayed a strong antivaccine view on Thursday, saying, “I would say we are affirmatively against the covid vaccine for young kids. These are the people who have zero risk of getting anything.” However, by Friday, the governor changed the policy and allowed the new covid vaccines to be used on young children.