DeSantis calls vaccine passports a ‘bad idea,’ will not be doing them in Florida

"I just want to make very clear in Florida, we are not doing any vaccine passports. All those experts said that it was a bad idea. I think it’s a bad idea and so that will not happen. And so folks should get vaccinated, if they want to, we’ll obviously provide that, but under no circumstances will the state be asking you to show proof of vaccination, and I don’t think private companies should be doing that either,” said DeSantis in a public health roundtable discussion Thursday, WKMG6 reports.

DeSantis, joined by Dr. Scott Atlas, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor Sunetra Gupta, and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, all disagreed with the action after the European Commission proposed issuing "Digital Green Certificates" to all European Union citizens.

"The vaccine hesitancy data show that the people who are hesitant to take vaccines actually tend to be the working class people, poor, poor people, minority populations. We’re going to then turn around and say, ‘You have to have a vaccine passport to participate in American life,’ it’s going to be a new vaccine Jim Crow. It’s a huge, huge mistake that will undermine trust in public health, and I think it’s just morally, it’s just morally wrong,” said Bhattacharya.

DeSantis called for Floridians to act on their own comfort levels in terms of attending reopening activities, and to decide whether or not they want the vaccine for themselves.

"To start going down the road of vaccine passports, I mean, you have some of these states saying to go to a sporting event, you have to show either a negative test or a vaccine proof. I think you just got to make decisions. If you want to go to an event, go to an event. If you don’t, don’t. But to be requiring people to provide all this proof, that’s not how you get society back to normal so we’re rejecting any vaccine passports here in the state of Florida,” stated DeSantis.

Despite businesses calling for the White House to take action on creating a health pass system, White House virus-response adviser Andy Slavitt said "It’s not the role of the government to hold that data and to do that. It needs to be private, the data should be secure, the access to it should be free, it should be available both digitally and in paper and in multiple languages.”