Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo disagreed with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new recommendation that most Americans get an updated COVID-19 shot this fall.
Ladapo, who was appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis, claimed the new COVID vaccines are not supported by clinical evidence.
“The American people deserve the truth, but the Biden administration only wants to control your behavior,” Ladapo said.
DeSantis echoed Ladapo’s claims.
“Dr. Ladapo advises caution regarding the use of hastily approved mRNA COVID boosters,” DeSantis said in his official statement. State X Account. “We will not stand by and let the FDA and CDC use Floridians as guinea pigs for mRNA jabs that have not been proven safe or effective.”
The new recommendations were issued by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which includes 15 research doctors from various fields, including pediatrics and epidemiology. Nine of the group’s 15 members were appointed during the Trump administration.
The committee voted 13-1 Tuesday to accept the new recommendations.
LADAPO issued its own recommendation, saying people under 65 should not get the updated vaccine, and people over 65 should discuss the vaccine with a medical professional before getting the vaccine. .
The CDC recommends that almost everyone over the age of 6 months get an updated vaccine. The agency said last year’s bivalent COVID-19 booster helped reduce COVID-related hospital admissions among all age groups.
While officials have acknowledged that the newly updated vaccine may have side effects, they say the benefits outweigh the risks. One risk the CDC noted was heart complications in children ages 12 to 17. However, the CDC said the risk of cardiovascular complications, including myocarditis, was 1.8 times to 5.6 times higher after COVID-19 infection than after COVID-19 vaccination.
“The side effects we can expect to see are very similar to what we have previously seen with other COVID vaccines,” said Dr. Kristin Englund, an infectious disease expert at the Cleveland Clinic. “So, if you had pain in your arm before, if you had a little pain, maybe a little low-grade fever, you can expect that to happen again.”
The new vaccines aim to provide protection against the latest variants of the virus. Last year’s bivalent COVID-19 booster is now considered obsolete and off the market.
As of May 10, nearly eight months after the last bivalent vaccine was released, only 17% of the U.S. population had received the updated shot, CDC said. The vaccine received the strongest response from seniors as 43% of people above 65 years of age got the updated shot.
The process for reviewing a new COVID-19 vaccine is similar to the standard practice used to approve the annual flu vaccine.
“The updated vaccines are expected to provide good protection against COVID-19 from currently circulating variants,” the FDA said. “Barring the emergence of clearly more virulent variants, the FDA anticipates that the composition of COVID-19 vaccines may need to be updated annually, as is done for seasonal influenza vaccines.”