Republican Governor Ron DeSantis announced on Thursday that he has secured more doses of a lifesaving antibody treatment – despite efforts by the Biden administration to take control of the treatment and punish southern red states.
The governor posted a video Thursday announcing the move, captioned, “Governor DeSantis announces acquisition of additional doses of monoclonal antibody treatments to counteract the federal government reducing Florida’s supply of the Regeneron monoclonal treatments.”
The move by DeSantis was necessary after the Biden administration announced they’d be rationing supply of the treatment after Florida noted that they had seen positive reactions to it and requested more supply.
As reported by Fortune, “Hospitals and other care providers will no longer be able to directly order monoclonal antibody therapies from distributors, according to a Sept. 13 update posted on the Department of Health and Human Services website.”
“Instead, the U.S. government will determine what quantity of the drugs to ship to each state and territory based on Covid-19 case numbers and use of the treatments locally. State health departments will then determine how to distribute the antibody therapies to hospitals and other sites, according to the HHS update,” the outlet added.
“Federal health officials plan to allocate specific amounts to each state under the new approach, in an effort to more evenly distribute the 150,000 doses that the government makes available each week,” Politico reported.
But the claim that the move was to alleviate shortages elsewhere was little more than a poorly thoughout out cover-up by the Biden administration whose real intention was to seek vengeance against a political foe in Florida.
At the time, the takeover was widely criticized and even deemed an act of “partisan payback” by Republican Senator Marco Rubio.
“Antibody treatments aren’t a substitute for vaccines. But they have prevented thousands of hospitalizations including in breakthrough cases,” Sen. Marco Rubio posted to Twitter last Thursday. “Now in a move that reeks of partisan payback against states like Florida, the Biden administration is rationing these treatments.”
The White House was widely criticized for not promoting the treatment and for reaching far fewer Americans than they should have weeks before Biden announced his move to take control of the treatment.
The most prominent company providing the treatment is Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, which has teamed up with the federal government to pass along the treatment to Americans for free. The company said in late August that it was reaching fewer than 30% of eligible patients — and that was up big-time from its numbers in July, when Regeneron reached fewer than 5% of eligible patients.
Needless to say the effective treatment – which is the same one that was given to President Trump when he contracted COVID – has been far underutilized.
The Washington Post last month criticized Biden’s effort to get the word out about the care. After Marcella Nunez-Smith, chair of the government’s COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force, said in mid-August that the treatment is effective and helps “keep people alive,” the Post slammed: “Her statement marked one of the few times since the Biden administration took office that the antibodies have been promoted by the response team. A review of its 52 briefings or news conferences shows they were discussed mostly when Anthony S. Fauci, the team’s infectious-disease specialist, offered a research update.”
Moreover, Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told the Post, “For the administration, mum’s the word on monoclonal antibodies, rapid home tests, high-quality masks . . . anything except vaccines. Which is wrong, since we need every tool in the kit to effectively take on delta; we’re not doing that well at all.”
Former FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan also told the Post in August that “access is still uneven and way below the number of people who could potentially benefit.”
Author: Frank Rogers
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