The Sunshine State’s decades-old vaccine requirements for daycare facilities and public schools mandates children receive inoculations against disease like measles, whooping cough, polio, among others.
Ladapo said the state’s health department could remove mandates on about half a dozen vaccines while the state legislature would be needed to remove the rest.
“Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Ladapo, a longtime vaccine skeptic, said.
Florida is now trying to become the first state to remove vaccine mandates for schools, a move that has shocked health professionals who have long advocated for vaccine mandates in schools to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.
Health officials who spoke with The Hill warned that Ladapo’s decision will have ripple effects across Florida communities and possibly the nation given the state’s popularity among tourists.
More than 40 million people visited Florida between January and March 2025 alone, according to the governor’s office.
“I would argue that this is the worst public health decision I’ve ever seen [from] a state health official,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. “This guy will have dead children at his feet.”
Florida is among the U.S. states with a measles vaccination rate below 90 percent, with the coverage rate of kindergarteners during the 2023-2024 sitting at 88.1 percent. An ideal coverage rate is considered to be 95 percent to prevent outbreaks.
That coverage rate is lower than that of Texas’s — 94.3 percent — where one of the worse measles outbreaks in decades occurred this year, spreading through West Texas communities with vaccination rates significantly lower than average.
