The Florida Department of Health will recommend against Covid-19 vaccinations for healthy children, the state's top public health official said.
The announcement from Ladapo came at the end of a 90-minute discussion between some of the medical community's most vocal skeptics of pandemic mitigation measures. The event, hosted by Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, was harshly critical of the CDC and governments that took steps to slow the spread of the virus through mask mandates and shutdown measures.
Several of the doctors and scientists on DeSantis' panel shared unproven concerns about the safety of the vaccine for kids. Children vaccinated against Covid-19 are less likely to be hospitalized for Covid-19 infections than children who are unvaccinated, recent data has shown.Vaccinated grade schoolers are nearly half as likely to have a Covid-19 case that resulted in care at an urgent care clinic or emergency room compared with children who were unvaccinated, according to a large study funded by the CDC.Children infected by Covid-19 can develop multisystem inflammatory syndrome weeks later.