Florida Surgeon General Advises Against COVID-19 Boosters

Florida’s controversial surgeon general is recommending against the upcoming class of COVID-19 boosters.

Joseph Ladapo, M.D., Ph.D., who was appointed to the position September 2021, said Floridians do not need to receive the next COVID shot.

“There’s essentially no evidence for it,” he said during a news conference Thursday, according to the local NBC News affiliate. “There’s been no clinical trials done in human beings showing it benefits people. There’s been no trial showing that it is a safe product for people.”

Dr. Ladapo, alongside Governor Ron DeSantis, have been prominent vaccine skeptics during the COVID-19 pandemic. In February, the Florida Department of Health issued a widely criticized and disputed warning that the shots would cause heart attacks in recipients. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), among others, spoke out against the warning.

The Surgeon General has also previously recommended against the vaccine being used in healthy children and teens, a decision that was also met by ire from the FDA.

Gov. DeSantis, a Republican who appointed Dr. Ladapo and has endorsed many of his statements, has also been criticized by some for statements and policies deemed “anti-vax.” He has also been a staunch critic of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other federal health agencies since the start of the pandemic.

A Yale study published in July found that Republicans in Florida and Ohio suffered significantly higher excess mortality rates during the pandemic than Democrats, with researchers pointing to disparities in vaccine uptake along party lines.

But Dr. Ladapo and Gov. DeSantis are hardly the only two who have criticized the regulators’ approach to rolling out the shots. 

None of the current boosters up for approval have undergone standard clinical trials, where participants typically receive either the booster or a placebo and are then followed for some period of time to gauge potential risks of infection, hospitalization or death.

Instead, drugmakers Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax have performed trials where they inject participants with the vaccines and then search for antibodies in blood drawn from the participants. These studies, so far, have shown promise. However, some experts believe it is not enough.

In response to White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre endorsing the shots during a press briefing, Marty Makary, M.D, a Johns Hopkins University public health expert wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: “[Jean-Pierre] says the new COVID XBB vaccine (expected to be FDA approved this week) works.  But how can she know since no human outcomes studies were conducted?”

While major pharmaceutical companies did perform some human trials, Dr. Makary is likely referring to a lack of standard clinical trials, mentioned above, like those used for the initial approval of the shots and first boosters. 

The FDA is expected to approve the shots as early as Friday, without a meeting by the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), a panel of outside advisors that usually convene for these matters, since the emergence of newer COVID strains.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the CDC’s equivalent of VRBPAC, is scheduled to meet on Tuesday, however CDC director Mandy Cohen, M.D., MPH, has already said she plans on the shots becoming available next week as well.