Florida Surgeon General Dr Joseph Ladapo appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News Thursday night and was praised for his state’s COVID-19 response, as Florida faces an explosion of new cases of the Omicron variant.

After being hit extremely hard by the Delta variant over the summer, Florida finally saw the number of cases and deaths plummet over the fall months, prompting Gov. Ron DeSantis and Ladapo to justify and celebrate their hands-off approach to the pandemic. While criticizing highly vaccinated states like New York for their recent spike in new cases, Carlson praised Florida for having “one of the lowest COVID rates in the country” while rejecting the vaccine and mask warrants.

At the end of the softball interview, which featured the two laughing as an on-air graphic screamed “How Florida is handling COVID the right way,” Carlson offered one final thought: ” I can’t wait for you to run HHS. I’ll come to your swearing-in. Doctor, thank you.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 cases are growing faster in Florida than in any other state, 100 percent increase over the past two weeks against 40 percent for the rest of the nation, according to The New York Times database. COVID Driving Test Sites in Miami also experienced incredibly long queues in the last days.