Florida lawmaker: State's top medical official should go for his mishandling of measles

Feb. 27 (UPI) -- U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz on Tuesday held a press conference at her Sunrise, Fla., office to address the ongoing measles outbreak while calling for the state's surgeon general to be removed.

The first measles case was reported February 16 and cases continue to rise as a 9th case of the measles was identified Tuesday.

This comes after Dr. Joseph Ladapo -- a 2021 Gov. Ron DeSantis appointee -- deferred medical judgment to parents over CDC recommendations on how to best confront an outbreak. The CDC recommends that parents keep unvaccinated children home for as long as 21 days -- which is the incubation period for measles.

Wasserman-Schultz -- the former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman -- said Florida leaders "are failing us on this front" during Tuesday's press conference, during which she called Florida's surgeon general a "misinformation super-spreader."

It was reported Monday that 216 Broward County school students were absent from school, with an average being about 100 for a school of that size.

Wasserman-Schultz said Ladapo "needs to go" while calling his policy approaches dangerous.

The school district said of their 1,067 students, 33 students in Manatee Bay do not have at least a single shot of the required two-doses vaccine for measles.

Ladapo, Wasserman-Schultz said, "stands in stark contrast to America's proud legacy of bipartisan public health success."

She said he "politicizes public health and peddles risky freedom of choice rhetoric," which fuels anti-vaccine hesitancy.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of Thursday there are a total of 35 cases of measles reported in 15 states: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York City, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington.

Dr. Mary Jo Trepka, chair of Florida International University's Epidemiology Department, called measles "highly contagious" and "a very serious disease" while she outlined symptoms.

"It used to be a major killer," she said while standing next to the Florida congresswoman.

Florida PTA legislative chair Latha Krishnaiyer said the measles vaccine is "proven to be an effective tool" and advised parents to follow the most recent CDC measles guidelines.

Broward County's school district says 92% of their student body is vaccinated, which leaves approximately 88 of their students unvaccinated for measles.

But a health expert says that mark is not sufficient enough.

"The problem that we have seen is when there's a drop in herd immunity," Dr. Hamadys Ale, a pediatric immunologist at Joe DiMaggio Children's Hospital, told NBC Miami.

By not vaccinating all students, Ale said, that "is something we have seen a trend on, the herd immunity has been declining and that is the window in which the virus can take advantage and infect the ones that are vulnerable."