Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo is being criticized for controversial comments he made about coronavirus testing during a press conference this week.
During Monday's news briefing, Ladapo said too many asymptomatic people are getting tested, and that's causing a backlog at testing sites around the state.
Lapado told reporters he'd rather focus on high-value testing on those most at risk, like the elderly, saying “high-value testing is testing that is likely to change outcomes, right? So if your grandmother gets a test, that’s a much more valuable test than the 8-year-old third graders that Los Angeles County is sending in to get weekly testing."
Ladapo added that we need to de-normalize the idea that you can't go anywhere unless you get tested.
The comments are leading to disagreements among health officials and local leaders.
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., gave her thoughts on Ladapo, telling WSVN "the governor hired a quack who doesn’t believe in science to be the surgeon general of the state, whose colleagues overwhelmingly disagree with him."
Health experts also seemed to disagree with Ladapo on the importance of testing to detect the virus and stop the spread.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said "people who are asymptomatic can also test positive, so limiting testing to just those who are symptomatic is not entirely consistent with the science that we’ve learned over the last several months."
Infectious disease expert Dr. Aileen Marty, with Florida International University, says "some percentage of those individuals will get severely ill. They’ll continue to spread it to individuals who are more sensitive to severe disease. You’ll have more possibilities of forming worse variants.”
The White House also responded saying testing continues to be a key pillar in detecting the virus and stopping the spread.
They added leaders should be uniting around it, not undermining it.