Florida only state not to preorder COVID vaccine for children

Welcome to today's edition of the Florida Coronavirus Watch Newsletter, which comes out every Monday and Thursday or as urgent news dictates.

Here's what's happening

- Finally! FDA panel recommends Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines for youngest kids. An expert panel on Wednesday unanimously found Moderna's vaccine safe for children 6 months to 6 years old, providing protection against COVID-19. The committee voted to support a Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children ages 6 months to 5 years.

If its decisions are upheld by the Food and Drug Administration's commissioner and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vaccines will be available for young children as soon as Tuesday.

Well, maybe. Florida might be a bit behind:

- Florida is the only state not to pre-order COVID-19 vaccines for kids under 5. Pediatricians and children’s hospitals are scrambling to figure out how to deal with a potential delay in getting COVID-19 vaccines for young children after Florida became the only state to not pre-order supply.

Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration chose not to pre-order thousands of COVID-19 vaccine doses for children under 5 from the federal government. “Our Department of Health has been very clear,” DeSantis said at a press conference in Miami. “The risks outweigh the benefits and we recommend against.”

“This is a long-awaited vaccine,” said FDA panel member Dr. Jay Portnoy. “There are so many parents who are absolutely desperate to get this vaccine, and I think we owe it to them to give them a choice to have the vaccine if they want to.”

- FDA panel recommends Moderna's COVID vaccine as a second option for kids 6 and older. Parents may have two choices soon. After hearing hours of testimony Tuesday, a federal advisory panel voted unanimously to recommend Moderna's vaccine be made available to children 6 and up. So far, only Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine has been allowed for children.

Assuming the Food and Drug Administration commissioner signs off on the panel's recommendation, as expected, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will review Moderna's vaccine data later this week and the shots could become available as soon as next week.

- Turns out Florida's NFL teams may not have tested for COVID-19 very well. An operational audit released this month by the State of Florida Auditor General suggests that COVID-19 test results for the state's three NFL teams in 2020 may not have been done in a complete, accurate and timely manner, if at all.

“It appears that the NFL players’ test results were not always reported in Merlin, or were not timely reported in Merlin,” the audit states. Merlin is the system used by the state Department of Health to collect Florida's COVID-19 data.

- The National Institute of Health ran massive trials to see if ivermectin helped COVID patients. It didn't. The randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial – the gold standard for determining effectiveness of drugs – is the largest of its kind studying the controversial antiparasitic.

In the eight-month study conducted during the delta and omicron waves, authors found no statistical difference in recovery time between patients receiving 400 micrograms of ivermectin for three days and patients getting a placebo. Patients given ivermectin recovered in about 11 days on average while patients given the placebo recovered in about 11.5 days.

- Thinking you don't need to be as careful anymore? Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the nation's pandemic health response and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden and the one person you'd think would be safe, tested positive for COVID-19 Wednesday.

Fauci, 81, is fully vaccinated and has received two booster shots, according to a statement from the National Institutes of Health. He has not been in close contact with Biden or any other senior government officials recently, the agency said.

COVID info to know

COVID-19 will be an issue for a long time to come, and we think more education is better. Here's what you need to know.

ABOUT COVID

• Your complete guide to coronavirus and COVID-19

• Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson vaccine booster shots: Things to know

• Where and when can I get a booster/second booster in Florida?

• This story is free for everyone: Compare the spread of COVID-19 in your area

AVOIDING COVID

• Why N95, KN95 masks are so much more effective against omicron than cloth

• Are N95 and KN95 masks reusable and how should you store them?

• Can you avoid COVID if a member in your household has it? Ways to decrease your risk

• Do I still need to wear a mask? What the new CDC COVID mask guidance means for Florida

TESTING

• Is it the flu, a cold, or COVID-19? How to know, and when to get tested

• What's the difference between at-home tests, over-the-counter rapid tests, and PCR tests?

DO YOU HAVE COVID?

• Were you exposed to coronavirus? Did you test positive? If so, here's what to do next

• Long COVID: Why aren't my symptoms going away? Why did they come back? Am I a long-hauler?

What do you want to know about COVID-19? You ask, we'll try to answer

From a reader: "What is the website for free COVID testing kits?"

Head to COVID.gov and order them there. You'll get eight, in two mailings of four each. These are rapid antigen tests, not the PCR ones that are more accurate but must be done by a healthcare provider and take time to produce results. At-home tests get you results within about half an hour, they're easy to do, and they work whether or not you have symptoms and whether or not you're up to date on your vaccines and booster.

You may want to hurry. The White House said last week they'd be diverting $10 billion in coronavirus relief from testing and other programs to maintain stockpiles of vaccines and treatments for Americans heading into the fall and winter since Congress has not yet acted to provide additional funding. This may or may not affect the free home tests. USA Today has the story about this for its subscribers.

Anything you'd like to know? Ask your questions here.

Thank you for reading! We appreciate you trusting our statewide journalists to keep you safe and informed. If you are encouraged by our work and want to support your local journalists, please consider subscribing. Know someone who would benefit from this newsletter? Forward this email so they can sign up.

Chris' note of the day: This Sunday we celebrate Juneteenth National Independence Day to commemorate the day the last enslaved people to find out about the Emancipation Proclamation — two years after it was signed — were finally told, in Galveston, Texas, the last state of the Confederacy with institutional slavery. Variously known as Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day, Freedom Day and Black Independence Day, it's also a time to celebrate African-American culture. Here's what you need to know about the nation's newest federal holiday. Check your local newspaper for events near you.

Here's what else is happening with the coronavirus in Florida today.

— C. A. Bridges, cbridges@gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Florida only state not to preorder COVID vaccine for children