Gov. DeSantis: I Was the First in the Country To Reject CDC Guidelines and Prioritized Vaccination of Seniors

‘We’re not done yet, but we’re getting closer every day’

EXCERPT:

DeSANTIS: "Seniors first. That was against the CDC recommendations. The CDC, initially they did not want to put seniors in front of the line at all, they wanted to do young workers, and actually their initial guidelines would have had a 20-year-old grocery store clerk get a vaccine before a 74-year-old grandmother. That did not make any sense in terms of where the risk is on this. So I was the first governor in the country to reject those guidelines, and I said we’ll do our 65-and-up community. That's 4.5 million people in Florida, so that's a lot of folks. But it's important to be able to do that, so we set a clear standard, 65 and up, and we continue to go all over the state to try to get that done. We have now done millions of senior citizens. And we’re not done yet, but we’re getting closer every day. And I think those states that prioritize the elderly for vaccination, when the dust settles on this in a few months, I think you will be able to show that you were able to reduce mortality more more than the states — some states are doing their prisoners before their elderly, Mark. I mean it's crazy.”

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