ORLANDO, Fla. — Dr. Raul Pino, who became a trusted voice of the pandemic response in the nation’s tourist capital, has been placed on administrative leave from his post as the state’s chief health officer in Orange County as the Florida Department of Health conducts an investigation.
Sources who spoke to the Orlando Sentinel on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss Pino’s status said he was placed on administrative leave after a Health Department employee complained about an email he sent Jan. 4 to agency staff about employee vaccination rates.
Pino, 58, declined to discuss the Health Department’s action, but an agency spokesperson confirmed his status.
“As the decision to get vaccinated is a personal medical choice that should be made free from coercion and mandates from employers, the employee in question has been placed on administrative leave, and the Florida Department of Health is conducting an inquiry to determine if any laws were broken in this case,” spokesperson Weesam Khoury said in an email Tuesday. “The Department is committed to upholding all laws, including the ban on vaccine mandates for government employees and will take appropriate action once additional information is known.”
She declined to provide details or Pino’s email.
The agency’s decision was first reported Tuesday by WFTV-Channel 9.
In the email, Pino said 77 of 568 employees had been fully vaccinated, including receiving a booster shot. Another 219 had received two shots.
“I am sorry but in the absence of reasonable and real reasons it is irresponsible not to be vaccinated,” Pino wrote in the email, according to the TV report. “We have been at this for two years, we were the first to give vaccines to the masses, we have done more than 300,000 and we are not even at 50% pathetic.”
Since March 2020, when the pandemic erupted in Central Florida, Pino has been a fixture on more than 150 press briefings, appearing beside Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings to discuss COVID-19, best practices, safety protocols, coronavirus infection, testing and vaccination rates, and deaths.
He last appeared at a press briefing Dec. 28, discussing the rise of the omicron variant.
Pino has urged residents to get vaccinated against the virus to protect themselves, those more vulnerable and the region’s tourism economy.
”Clearly vaccines are working for us … and are the solution to this crisis,” he said last month, as county officials announced the omicron variant was beginning to crest and emerge as the dominant strain of SARS-CoV-2 in the county’s wastewater. “The vaccine continues to be effective against the variants.”
Pino’s journey to Central Florida began more than 25 years ago when he left Cuba as a political refugee and resettled in New England.
Eight years earlier he had graduated from medical school in Cuba and trained in plastic surgery at the Naval Hospital in Havana. He worked odd jobs in the U.S. at first, including picking blueberries in Connecticut. But he never gave up on a health career. He eventually earned a master’s degree in public health from the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and was hired by the Connecticut Department of Public Health as an epidemiologist.
While Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, and Demings, a Democrat, have often sparred over vaccination and face-masking mandates, Pino has tread a thin line between the two elected officials, usually offering raw data and opinions based on his medical experience and research.
During press briefings, Pino patiently answered questions posed to him in English or Spanish, whether at the county podium or out in public, because, he has said, accurate information is a significant weapon in the fight against COVID-19. He always offered condolences to families who experienced loss because of the pandemic.
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