President Joe Biden has harshly criticized DeSantis and others for resisting efforts to encourage the use of masks and increase vaccinations, promising in a speech last week that if “governors don’t help us beat the pandemic, I will use my power as president to get them out of the way. “
However, until recently, the administration had sent antibody treatments to states as needed, with top health officials in early August to encourage those fighting the rising Delta to seek even more. supply.
But demand from a handful of southern states has exploded since then, according to state and federal officials, who worried they were consuming a disproportionate amount of the national supply. Seven states (Texas, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana and Alabama) accounted for 70 percent of all orders in early September.
The imbalance sparked an effort to curb control of supplies, out of concern that the government would not have enough to respond to Covid-19 rises elsewhere in the country.
Earlier this month, HHS officials told states they would look more closely at how much of the treatments were being used, but that the department would not limit the supply of states.
“The answer is no, we haven’t gone back to an assignment process,” said John Redd, chief physician in HHS’s emergency preparedness and response office at the time.
That changed a few days later, when the department informed states that it was in fact planning to regain control of where doses were sent, with assignments based on case levels and the use of antibody drugs.
“HHS will determine how much product each state and territory will receive weekly,” an HHS spokesman said. “State and territorial health departments will later identify the sites that will receive the product and how much.”
The decision prompted criticism from the Alabama State Medical Association, which warned it would limit access to treatment for hospitals that were already experiencing an increase in patients with Covid-19.
In Tennessee, health department spokeswoman Sarah Tanksley told POLITIC that additional control of state orders was already leading to delays in the distribution of drugs to providers.
Still, administration officials have been arguing in recent weeks over southern states’ confidence in costly treatments paid for by the federal government, even as several governors have attacked Biden for his attempts to raise the rate. vaccination and reduce case loads.
States like Tennessee and Alabama that have been heavily dependent on drugs are also among those with the lowest levels of Covid-19 vaccination.
“That’s where the rises are,” said Marcus Plescia, chief physician of the Association for State and Territorial Health Officials, of the growing demand for monoclonal antibody drugs. “And where they have not been successful with the other mitigation efforts.”
The new HHS policy represents a return to the early days of the pandemic response, when states had few other options to combat Covid-19 and demand was high for any treatment that could help keep people out of the pandemic. ‘hospital.
Once Covid-19 vaccines spread across the country and decreased case loads, demand for monoclonal antibody drugs fell, allowing the government to distribute them more freely as needed.
However, as Delta fueled a resurgence throughout the southeast, Republican governors joined the treatments as a preferred alternative to imposing public health restrictions. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has opened a number of antibody infusion centers, though he has tried to ban mask requirements in schools.
DeSantis has similarly announced efforts to make treatment widely available, while minimizing the threat of the virus and criticizing the Biden administration’s support for vaccine mandates and school mask mandates.
“Floridians who receive this treatment are people who need it,” DeSantis spokeswoman Christina Pushaw said. “We are proud of this launch and we are proud of Governor DeSantis to lead it and increase the vision of this treatment across the country.”
Faced with this growing demand, the Biden administration has also strived to accelerate the manufacture of medicines; already, the government has increased its global weekly shipment to 150,000 doses to 100,000.
Still, it will likely take several weeks to widen the pipeline for treatments, and state officials say they expect the new limits to remain in place at least until October.
“No one used monoclonal antibodies until a few weeks ago. Then there was only this increase in use, “said Plescia. “Now there’s clearly a shortcoming.”