Only days after Joe Biden effectively took the federal government out of the fight against COVID-19, insisting it is up to states, one state official is accusing Washington of intentionally shutting down one of the paths states had to protect their residents.
In a letter this week, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo charged Biden’s appointees are “actively preventing the effective distribution of monoclonal antibody treatments.”
It was in a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and Ladapo made the charge.
He cited the 78% vaccination rate for Floridians, explaining, “without the heavy hand of government mandates, Florida is above the national average in the percent of people receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.”
He noted that when the Delta variant appeared, the state set up dozens of sites to provide the monoclonal antibody therapy to residents.
In September alone, he said, the state provided “life-saving treatment to nearly 100,000 patients.”
But then, he charged, “Without any advanced notice, the U.S. Department of Heath and Human Services announced a dramatic reduction in the number of monoclonal antibodies to be allocated to the state of Florida.”
He said the governor moved to acquire other supplies, but, “the lack of allocation of this life-saving treatment from the federal government continues to cause another immediate and life-threatening shortage of treatment options to the state of Florida as the omicron variant spreads.”
“The federal agencies under your control should not limit our state’s access to any available treatments for COVID-19. … This shortsightedness is especially evident given that the federal government effectively prohibited states from purchasing these monoclonal antibodies and serving their populations directly,” he wrote.
NEW: Florida Surgeon General says Biden Admin is “actively preventing” distribution of monoclonal antibodies by pausing shipments of Regeneron, in letter to HHS Sec.
Feds paused Regeneron bc it may not work against Omicron. FL says it can still be used in existing Delta cases. pic.twitter.com/9mmw5SsuZJ
— Jay O’Brien (@jayobtv) December 28, 2021
Fox News explained Biden “recently paused shipments of COVID-19 antibody treatments manufactured by major drug companies Regeneron and Eli Lilly amid claims that such treatments are not effective against the omicron variant of the coronavirus.”
Ladapo had referenced Biden’s decision to back the federal government out of the problem, when Biden said, this week, “There is no federal solution. This gets solved at the state level.”
Arkansas Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson had warned Biden against letting “federal solutions stand in the way of state solutions.”
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