DeSantis’ administration advised against the new COVID-19 booster Wednesday for anyone under the age of 65.
“I will not stand by and let the FDA and CDC use healthy Floridians as guinea pigs for new booster shots that have not been proven to be safe or effective,” DeSantis said in a statement.
“Once again, Florida is the first state in the nation to stand up and provide guidance based on truth, not Washington edict,” he added.
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Lapado announced the state’s new vaccine guidelines Wednesday during a panel discussion, moderated by DeSantis, which included health professionals who opposed the shot.
Lapado says the new booster was approved without “meaningful” clinical trial data performed in humans and without proof of its safety or effectiveness.
“At this point with the amount of immunity that’s in the community … and the questions we have about safety and about effectiveness, but especially about safety, my judgment is that it’s not a good decision for young people and for people who are not at high risk at this point in the pandemic,” Lapado said.
Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya, who also attended the roundtable, said the CDC’s statement on the new booster is “absolutely not supported yet.”
“I’m not saying it’s not true,” Bhattacharya said. “The answer is, we just don’t know.”
The CDC recommended this week that all Americans aged 6 months and older receive the COVID-19 booster shot, which Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna will have available by Friday. The CDC says vaccination is the best protection against COVID-related death and hospitalization, while reducing the effects of so-called Long COVID.
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