By: Grace Zhang

Florida allows pediatricians to order vaccines for children under 5 after being pressured by thousands of furious people desperate to protect the younger children. The vaccines are expected to arrive next Monday, June 20th, 2022.

The other forty-nine states were ahead of Florida in ordering vaccines, although the Federal Government set a deadline to have all vaccines ordered by June 14th. Florida refused to authorize doctors to order the vaccines until the Food and Drug Administration approves them.

On June 17th, 2022, Dr. Ashish K. Jha, the White House’s Coronavirus response coordinator told reporters “The state of Florida intentionally missed multiple deadlines to order vaccines.” Bryan Griffin, a deputy press secretary has a different story. He says that Florida was not supposed to be involved in the preordering of vaccines for children. “The state of Florida does not recommend the vaccine be administered to healthy children,” he stated.

Doctors could not preorder doses unless they had a state portal that would not be opened until Friday. Vaccines are typically administered at a pediatrician’s office. Dr. Lisa Gwynn says “First they said providers could order directly from the federal government. That’s not true. We have to order through the state.” She was not informed that physicians would be allowed to place orders after they received F.D.A. authorization. “I’ve been back and forth with people in the agency. They’re not telling me this.”

On June 16th, Mr. DeSantis defended his administration’s refusal to preorder any Coronavirus vaccines for medical facilities; that includes public health offices under state control. He said, “I would say we are affirmatively against the Coronavirus vaccine for young kids, These are the people who have zero risk of getting anything.”

A few days later, a congressional subcommittee overseeing the Coronavirus response had sent Mr. DeSantis a letter attempting to persuade him to reverse his position.