Mississippi State Health Officer touts importance of vaccine mandates after Florida roll back

• Dr. Daniel Edney warns against Mississippi following suit with Florida’s plan to remove childhood vaccine mandates.

Last Wednesday, the Surgeon General of Florida, Joseph Ladapo, told the state’s residents that he will work toward removing vaccine mandates, most notably for children. 

While making that announcement, he described the state’s vaccine mandates as “wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” adding that parents should be the ones to decide what is introduced into their child’s body.

Florida Governor Ron Desantis indicated publicly he backs Ladapo’s efforts. However, it will be up to the Florida Legislature and the state’s Department of Health to make any real changes to its vaccine mandates.

The potential removal of vaccine mandates has caused many in the medical community to express concern.

Currently, most of the nation’s children begin receiving certain vaccinations soon after they are born, with additional rounds of vaccines and booster shots continuing into their school years. According to the American Lung Association, about 20 percent of American’s population died before turning 5-years-old in the early 1900s. Most of those children died after being exposed to the infectious diseases, diseases which today’s vaccines prevent more often than not.

Vaccines in Mississippi are required for children who will be entering daycare, head start and public schools. Those vaccinations begin at birth, and continue until the child is 18 months old, with some additional vaccines and boosters necessary as the child reaches 18 years old.

Requests for comment on the proposed push in Florida from Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves and Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann did not garner a response by press time.

Mississippi State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney told Magnolia Tribune vaccine mandates should stay in place. 

“The Mississippi State Department of Health and the State Board of Health have a responsibility to give the best guidance and advice to protect our communities from disease through science-based strategies, including vaccination,” Edney described. “For decades, vaccines have been proven to be the best way to save lives and limit the spread and severity of communicable diseases.”

For decades, he said vaccines have proven to reduce and prevent epidemics in the state. Vaccinations children in Mississippi receive protect them from contracting various diseases, such as polio, diphtheria, measles, whooping cough, mumps, tetanus, hepatitis B and certain types of meningitis, Edney listed. He said those protections have been scientifically proven.

“Over the last 40 years, our state has achieved excellent control, even near extinction, of vaccine preventable illnesses which used to cause serious disease and even death of far too many of our infants and children thanks to vaccinations,” Edney added.

Mississippi law does allow for vaccine exemptions for medical and religious reasons. However, parents must go through a process that involves submitting paperwork to the Mississippi State Department of Health, a process that can take months.

Mandates vary across states, and the Centers for Disease Control reported that during the 2024-2025 school year that more than 280,000 children across the nation attended kindergarten without the proper documentation demonstrating they completed the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, along with the polio vaccine. 

During the 2024-2025 school year, the CDC reports that Mississippi had a vaccination rate of about 97.6 percent. That was a slight increase from the previous year’s rate of 97.5 percent, but a decline from a three-year stint between 2015-2016 to 2017-2018 when Mississippi’s rate was 99.4 percent. 

Florida’s vaccination rate has consistently lagged behind Mississippi’s, reaching a high of 94.1 in 2016-2017. During the 2024-2025 school year, Florida’s rate was 88.8 percent.

The national average was about 91 percent for the 2024-2025 school year.

“Mississippi has led the way for years with some of the highest childhood vaccination rates in the country, which have in turn kept serious public health outbreaks from occurring,” Edney explained. “If we should experience a major decline in vaccination rates, it would endanger many Mississippians — families, schoolchildren, senior citizens, pregnant women and those with compromised immune systems. We take the responsibility of providing the best, science-based guidance to our population very seriously.” 

Edney said their mission at the state Department of Health “is, and will always be, to protect the health and safety of everyone in Mississippi.”