Donald Trump Jr. slammed the Biden administration on Thursday in response to reports that it will restrict the distribution of monoclonal ...
Donald Trump Jr. slammed the Biden administration on Thursday in response to reports that it will restrict the distribution of monoclonal antibody treatments to states after a slew of predominately Republican-led states in the South have seen a surge in demand for the treatments.
“Americans will die because of Biden’s despicable decision to punish his political enemies in red states by restricting their ability to secure life-saving monoclonal antibody treatments for all that need them,” Trump tweeted. “Their blood is directly on Joe’s hands.”
“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. “The approach is likely to cut into shipments to GOP-led states in the Southeast that have made the pricey antibody drug a central part of their pandemic strategy, while simultaneously spurning mask mandates and other restrictions.”
The news comes as Biden, who has launched political attacks against top Republican governors, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, struggles to contain the pandemic, which was one of the issues that he ran on in 2020.
“Still, until recently, the administration had shipped the antibody treatments to states on an as-needed basis — with top health officials in early August going as far as encouraging those battling the Delta surge to seek even more supply,” the report added. “But demand from a handful of southern states has exploded since then, state and federal officials said, raising concerns 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 report said that the large uptick in the use of the treatments prompted the Biden administration’s decision to take more control over-allocating the treatments to different states.
“HHS will determine the amount of product each state and territory receives on a weekly basis. State and territorial health departments will subsequently identify sites that will receive product and how much,” said a spokesperson from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “This system will help maintain equitable distribution, both geographically and temporally, across the country — providing states and territories with consistent, fairly distributed supply over the coming weeks.”
The office of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, which has helped lead the charge in using the antibody treatments, called out Biden in a statement over his administration’s decision.
“We were happy to see that Biden’s COVID plan announced last week included a 50% increase in monoclonal antibody deliveries to states this month,” DeSantis Press Secretary Christina Pushaw told The Daily Wire in a statement. “So it’s surprising and deeply disappointing that the Biden Admin would break this promise just a week later and cut MAB allocation to Florida, so they aren’t even providing half of the doses of life saving treatment that COVID patients in Florida will need. But Governor DeSantis is committed to ensuring that everyone who needs the treatment will be able to get it, even if we can’t count on the Biden Administration.”
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