TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Florida’s plan to eliminate school vaccine mandates is likely to be in effect for 90 days, and will only include chicken pox and other illnesses unless lawmakers decide to expand to other diseases like polio and measles, the health department said Sunday.
The department said four days after Florida surgeon general Dr. Joseph Radapop, the vaccination would be voluntarily administered first to voluntarily to allow families to decide whether to inoculate the child.
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It is a withdrawal from decades of public policy and research that has shown that vaccines are safe and the most effective way to stop spreading epidemics, especially among children. Despite this evidence, US Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has expressed deep skepticism about the vaccine.
Florida’s plan will raise mandate for school vaccines for meningitis and other hepatitis B, Chickenpox, HIB influenza and pneumococcal disease, the Health Department said.
“The department began changing the rules on September 3, 2025, and we expect the rules to change will not be effective for about 90 days,” the state told The Associated Press in an email. Florida’s public school year began in August.
All other vaccinations needed to attend school under Florida law “exist” and “exist” it includes vaccines for measles, polio, difteria, whooping cough, mumps and tetanus, he said “exist” “unless renewed through the law.”
The committee meeting will begin in October, but lawmakers will not meet again until January 2026.
Ladapo, who appeared on CNN on Sunday, reiterated the message of free choice for childhood vaccines.
“If you want them, God’s blessing, you can have as many as you want,” he said. “And if you don’t want them, parents should have the ability and power to decide what goes into their child’s body. That’s very easy.”
Florida currently has a religious exemption for vaccine requirements. The vaccine has saved at least 154 million lives worldwide over the past 50 years, the World Health Organization reported in 2024. Most of them were infants and children.
Dr. Lana Alyssa, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Florida chapter, said voluntary vaccines put students and school staff at risk.
This was the worst year for measles in the United States in more than 30 years, with more than 1,400 confirmed cases nationwide, mostly in Texas, with three confirmed deaths.
Hoop’s cough killed at least two babies in Louisiana and a 5-year-old in Washington. According to spare CDC data, as of August 23, there were more than 19,000 cases, nearly 2,000 more than last year.
