TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — In the first step of the Florida Senate confirmation process, the Committee on Health Policy voted to recommend confirmation of Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo. 

During his four months as top doctor, Ladapo has made headlines and waves within the medical community, mainly on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which state senators questioned him on during Wednesday’s hearing.

Minutes ahead of the vote, Democrats announced they were walking out after feeling Ladapo wasn’t answering their questions. 

Ladapo’s confirmation hearing comes as Republicans and Democrats argue over the right way to move the state forward in the pandemic, which has been controversial.

Soon after being appointed surgeon general in September 2021, Ladapo issued an emergency ruling which changed how students could quarantine. Under the rule, students would not be subject to quarantining for exposure to coronavirus. 

"We respect that some parents may be less comfortable sending their kid back to school after being exposed," he said on his second day on the job, "and so the new rule allows for those parents to keep their children home for a period of time. The new rule also allows parents who are more comfortable letting their healthy child return to school, go back to school."

Then in October, Ladapo made headlines for a meeting he had at the capitol with a senator, in which he refused to wear a mask; Sen. Tina Polsky (D- Boca Raton) asked him to wear a mask, since she had recently been diagnosed with cancer. Ladapo refused this and offered to meet outside instead. 

In light of the high demand for COVID-19 testing over the holidays, Ladapo again spoke to the matter, asking some people not to get tested.

“If you have no symptoms, you know, please don’t get tested. There’s just ... you’re so unlikely to benefit from that, and you could be harmed. We’ve seen how children have been kept home from school because they’ve been exposed and now they’ve got to stay home from school for some period of time," he said. 

Most recently, Ladapo stood by DeSantis, railing against the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) decision to revise authorization for some monoclonal antibody treatments. 

“The federal government has failed to adequately provide the United States with adequate outpatient treatment options for COVID-19," he wrote Monday night.