On Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced the formation of the Public Health Integrity Committee, to be headed by Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo. The committee will be charged with assessing federal health decisions, recommendations, and guidance related to public health care.

This comes in the wake of DeSantis’s criticism of the Biden administration’s handling of vaccine mandates, as well as his criticism of what he called “propaganda” and vaccine side effect misinformation.

DeSantis has even gone so far as to file a petition to impanel a statewide grand jury to investigate “crimes and wrongs” in Florida related to the COVID-19 vaccines and enforcement methods, as reported by Rebel News. 

Citing research into deaths following COVID-19 vaccinations in Germany, DeSantis said that after reviewing 25 autopsies of people who died suddenly within 20 days of the COVID-19 vaccination, four deaths were due to acute arrhythmogenic cardiac failure.

“Standardized autopsies were performed on 25 persons who had died unexpectedly and within 20 days after anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccination,” reads the study’s abstract. "In four patients who received a mRNA vaccination, we identified acute (epi-)myocarditis without detection of another significant disease or health constellation that may have caused an unexpected death.”

The news of the formation of the Public Health Integrity Committee comes at a time when pharmacies and doctors are rolling out COVID booster campaigns, and death tolls for COVID have spiked across the country, prompting some cities to urge masking as cases grow.

DeSantis’s decision to form the committee is a response to the growing concern over the safety of the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine, and the need for more research into the potential side effects.

The committee will be tasked with assessing the federal health decisions, recommendations, and guidance related to public health care, and will hopefully provide more clarity and transparency into the safety of the vaccine.