As head of Orange County Health Services, Raul Pino hopes to work well with state
On the first day of his new job, Dr. Raul Pino, the former state health officer in Orange County, steered clear of politics.
In a 30-minute phone interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Pino, now head of Orange County Health Services, addressed a wide range of topics, including his relationship with the Florida Department of Health; his two-month involuntary leave from his state post; and health challenges facing Orange County.
He did not mention Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican whose vocal opposition to face masking and COVID-19 vaccination mandates were often at odds with Pino’s personal views and those of Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, a Democrat and his new boss.
Pino also did not speak of Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who in March questioned the safety of COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children. Instead Pino said he supported the dissenting opinion of Ladapo’s predecessor, Scott Rivkees, a board-certified pediatrician who wrote a column for Time magazine entitled “Setting the Record Straight about COVID-19 Vaccines for Children.”
“Some people suggest that severe COVID-19, which means cases needing hospitalization or resulting in death, only affects children who have underlying medical conditions. This is wrong,” Rivkees wrote. “Nearly 40% of children with severe COVID-19 do not have underlying medical conditions.”
Pino said he agreed with Rivkees and recognized a parent has the right to exercise decision-making in health care.
State health officials placed Pino, 58, on leave in January after he sent a staff-wide email expressing frustration with low vaccination rate among his former employees. His paid absence lasted about two months while the Health Department looked into whether he broke laws in determining the vaccination status of employees. Pino denied accessing vaccination information of state workers.
Pino, state health officer in Orange County since May 2019, returned to work March 15 after agreeing to a “corrective action plan,” which called for him to meet regularly with a mentor and have staff-wide emails reviewed before sending. He resigned April 18.
Asked if he was treated fairly, Pino said, “The short answer to that is I don’t think so, but it’s more complicated than that.”
“If someone complains, they have an obligation [to investigate], of course. With that, I agree. But what I didn’t agree with was how it was conducted and how long it took,” he said. “It’s very easy to know if I had
accessed the information or not, which I didn’t.”
Orange County commissioners approved his hiring April 26. His annual salary was set at $172,000.
Demings had described Pino as “our trusted friend and partner” after the health officer was placed on leave.
“During these most recent years, Dr. Pino’s leadership has been instrumental in the success of our public health initiatives, including our response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the mayor then said in a news release announcing Pino’s hiring.
Pino said he expects to work with the Health Department as his predecessor Yolanda Martinez did. She retired April 1.
“I will do everything in my power to have an even better relationship than we had before and, I think, it’s the intention of the Health Department to do so as well,” Pino said. “Actually, as I was leaving, part of the conversation was we needed to keep the relationship going.”
In his new role, Pino will oversee the county medical clinic, the animal shelter, mosquito control and health services at the jail.
In his former role, Pino kept a close eye on COVID19. The county’s 14-day average rate of COVID-19 infection rose over the past month from 3.5% April 1 to 10.3% May 1, according to the Health Department, which tweets the average several times a week.
Pino said rising numbers aren’t the cause for alarm they once were.
“The difference between now and the beginning is that now we have all the tools in place,” he said of vaccines and treatments.
Pino said he still believes people who are feeling sick have a social responsibility to protect others.
“I advise people now that if you’re going into a crowded environment and... you have pre-existing conditions or you have someone at home who is immunosuppressed, putting a mask on is a good idea,” he said. “Otherwise it’s a personal choice... like wearing a hat.”