DeSantis issues new, nonbinding COVID guidelines on masks, quarantines, medications

Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo unveiled a series of updated COVID-19 guidelines on Thursday in an announcement that criticized current recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The state’s Department of Health, which Ladapo leads, is now recommending that businesses should stop requiring employees to wear masks. The department is giving doctors a way to complain to state regulators if healthcare facilities don’t approve of their treatment plans for COVID-19 patients. And the state says Floridians can stop isolating and reappear maskless in public five days after testing positive for the virus — as long as they have no fever and their symptoms are improving.

“We don’t want people to be sued for just running normal businesses in case someone catches a respiratory virus. It’s not something that you can just simply stop,” DeSantis said in a video announcement posted to Rumble, an alternative to YouTube that’s a favorite among conservatives. “But at the same time, we want all of those institutions to be following sound guidance that’s in the best interest of their institutions, their employees and the state of Florida.”

The announcement came via an emailed release on the same day DeSantis addressed a who’s who of conservative policymakers at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando. In his speech at the conference, he claimed that Florida had “defeated Fauci-ism” — a jab at Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser.

The recommendation that businesses stop requiring employees to mask up does not appear to come with any enforcement mechanism, and it’s contradicted in part by other state rules. One of the conditions under which an employee can eschew a company’s vaccine mandate is to sign a form provided by the Department of Health in which the person pledges to wear protective equipment.

Fresh off of his confirmation by the Florida Senate, Ladapo argued that masks don’t protect workers, nor do they protect their customers.

“And obviously it’s terribly uncomfortable for the employees.” DeSantis added in the Rumble video, which was titled, “Buck the CDC.”

The CDC website lists more than a dozen studies that have shown masking to be helpful in curbing the spread of the virus. However, none of the studies specifically tested the effect of employee masking on their health or the health of patrons.

One line from the Department of Health’s guidelines particularly troubled Glenn Morris, a professor of infectious disease and the director of the University of Florida’s Emerging Pathogens Institute.

“There is no proven significant clinical benefit for facial coverings among the general population,” the guidance reads.

Morris said that statement contradicts much of the available scientific data, and that it does not allow for a level of nuance that would be suitable for public health messaging during a pandemic.

“What this does is discourage the use of a non-pharmaceutical intervention, which has shown to be effective,” Morris said, noting that immunocompromised or unvaccinated Floridians may have to rely on others around them to wear a mask in order to protect them from disease.

On Thursday, Ladapo also sent out new guidance for healthcare providers allowing physicians to exercise their “individual clinical judgment and expertise” when treating COVID-19 patients. If a doctor feels their healthcare facility is not allowing them to do so, the state has created a way for providers to lodge a complaint with regulators.

For more than a year, DeSantis and Ladapo have called for more aggressive treatment plans for COVID-19. They’ve each at various times touted hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment, for example. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration briefly issued an emergency use authorization allowing doctors to treat COVID patients with that drug in 2020, subsequent studies have shown it to be ineffective against the virus.

The guidance lists the antidepressant fluvoxamine and inhaled budesonide, which is used to treat shortness of breath, as two potential remedies that doctors could consider using off-label to treat the virus.

Christina Pushaw, a DeSantis spokesperson, said the guidance was meant to give doctors and patients more freedom when treating COVID-19.

“If a doctor determines that a COVID-19 patient might benefit from early treatment with an FDA-approved drug used off-label, and the patient provides informed consent to try that treatment, the patient should have the right to try that treatment,” Pushaw wrote in an email.

This story was originally published February 24, 2022 at 5:00 PM.