ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Florida plans to become the first state to eliminate vaccine mandates, a longtime cornerstone of public health policy for keeping schoolchildren and adults safe from infectious diseases.<\/p>\n
State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who announced the decision Wednesday, cast current requirements in schools and elsewhere as \u201cimmoral\u201d intrusions on people\u2019s rights that hamper parents\u2019 ability to make health decisions for their children.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople have a right to make their own decisions, informed decisions,\u201d Ladapo, who has frequently clashed with the medical establishment, said at a news conference in Valrico. \u201cThey don\u2019t have the right to tell you what to put in your body. Take it away from them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Florida\u2019s move, a significant departure from decades of public policy and research that has shown vaccines to be safe and the most effective way to stop the spread of communicable diseases, especially among schoolchildren, is a notable embrace of the Trump administration\u2019s public health agenda led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist.<\/p>\n
Dr. Rana Alissa, chair of the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said removing vaccines puts students and school staff at greater risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen everyone in a school is vaccinated, it is harder for diseases to spread and easier for everyone to continue learning and having fun,\u201d Alissa said in an email. \u201cWhen children are sick and miss school, caregivers also miss work, which not only impacts those families but also the local economy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani, who is running for Orlando mayor, said in a social media post that scrapping vaccines \u201cis reckless and dangerous\u201d and could cause outbreaks of preventable disease.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a public health disaster in the making for the Sunshine State,\u201d Eskamani said on the social platform X.<\/p>\n
Amid turmoil at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fueled by Kennedy\u2019s extensive restructuring and downsizing, the Democratic governors of Washington, Oregon and California announced Wednesday that they had created an alliance to safeguard health policies, contending that the administration is politicizing public health decisions.<\/p>\n
The partnership plans to coordinate health guidelines by aligning immunization plans based on recommendations from respected national medical organizations, according to a joint statement from Gov. Bob Ferguson of Washington, Gov. Tina Kotek of Oregon and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.<\/p>\n
Vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives globally over the past 50 years, the World Health Organization reported in 2024. The majority of those were infants and children.<\/p>\n
\u201cVaccines are among the most powerful inventions in history, making once-feared diseases preventable,\u201d said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general.<\/p>\n
In Florida, vaccine mandates for child day care facilities and public schools include shots for measles, chickenpox, hepatitis B, diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis, polio and other diseases, according to the state Health Department\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
Ladapo didn\u2019t give a timeline for the changes but said the department can scrap its own rules for some vaccine mandates, though others would require action by the Florida Legislature. He did not specify any particular vaccines but repeated several times that the effort would end \u201call of them. Every last one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The American Medical Association issued a statement saying Florida\u2019s plan to end vaccine mandates \u201cwould undermine decades of public health progress.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile there is still time, we urge Florida to reconsider this change to help prevent a rise of infectious disease outbreaks that put health and lives at risk,\u201d said Dr. Sandra Adamson Fryhofer, an AMA trustee.<\/p>\n
Under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida resisted imposing COVID vaccines on schoolchildren during the pandemic, requiring \u201cpassports\u201d for places that draw crowds, school closures and mandates that workers get the shots to keep their jobs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s another state that\u2019s done as much as Florida. We want to stay ahead of the curve,\u201d the governor said.<\/p>\n
DeSantis also announced the creation of a state \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d commission Wednesday modeled after similar initiatives that Kennedy established at the federal level.<\/p>\n
The commission would look into such things as allowing informed consent in medical matters, promoting safe and nutritious food, boosting parental rights in medical decisions about their children and eliminating \u201cmedical orthodoxy that is not supported by the data,\u201d DeSantis said. The commission will be chaired by Lt. Gov. Jay Collins and Florida first lady Casey DeSantis.<\/p>\n
The commission\u2019s work will help inform a large \u201cmedical freedom package\u201d to be introduced in the Legislature next session, which would address the vaccine mandates required by state law and make permanent the recent state COVID decisions relaxing restrictions, DeSantis said.<\/p>\n
Curt Anderson, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Florida plans to become the first state to eliminate vaccine mandates, a longtime cornerstone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[549,43,84,77,44,714,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-118895","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-education","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-international","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-top-news","15":"tag-top-stories","16":"tag-topnews","17":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}