Florida’s plan to eliminate school vaccination mandates will probably not enter into force for up to 90 days and would include only the injections against chickenpox and some other diseases, unless legislators decide to expand it to others such as polio and measles, according to the Department of Health on Sunday.
The department responded to a request for information, four days after Florida’s General Health Services, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, announced that the State would become the first to volunteer immunization and allow families to decide if they vaccinate their children.
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This is a setback with respect to decades of public policies and investigations that have shown that vaccines are safe and the most effective way to stop the propagation of transmissible diseases, especially among children. Despite this evidence, the United States Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has expressed a deep skepticism about vaccines.
Florida’s plan would eliminate school vaccination mandates against Hepatitis B, chickenpox, Hib influenza and pneumococcal diseases, such as meningitisas reported by the Department of Health.
“The department began the change of regulations on September 3, 2025 and provides that it will not enter into force for approximately 90 days,” the State told in an email. The public school year in Florida began in August.
All other vaccines required by Florida’s law to attend school “remain in force, unless they are updated by legislation”, including vaccines against the Measles, polio, diphtheria, whore cough, papers and tetanusthe department said.
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State legislators will not meet again until January 2026, although the meetings of the Legislative Committees begin in October.
During an interview on Sunday in CNN, Ladapo reiterated his message of free choice of children’s vaccines.
“If you want them, God bless you, they can have all those who want,” he said. “And if they don’t want them, parents must have the ability and power to decide which vaccines manage their children.
Florida currently has a religious exemption for vaccination requirements. Vaccines have saved at least 154 million lives worldwide in the last 50 years, according to the World Health Organization in 2024. Most of the beneficiaries have been babies and children.
Dr. Rana Alissa, president of the Florida section of the American Pediatrics Academy, said that making vaccines volunteers put students and school staff at risk.
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This is the worst year of measles in the United States in more than three decades, with more than 1,400 confirmed cases throughout the country, most in Texas, as well as three deaths.
Since last winter, the Raine cough has caused the death of at least two babies in Louisiana and a 5 -year -old boy in the state of Washington, due to its rapid propagation.
Until August 23, more than 19,000 cases had been recorded, almost 2,000 more than in this time last year, according to preliminary CDC data.
