Sunshine Sentinel

As the administration of President Joe Biden seeks to limit Florida's access to monoclonal antibody treatments, Gov. Ron DeSantis has announced the state’s purchase of 3,000 doses.

The federal government recently reduced the number of monoclonal antibody treatments going into Florida by 31,000 doses to less than 26,000, according to a press release from DeSantis' office. In response, DeSantis announced that the state purchased 3,000 doses directly from GlaxoSmithKline, one of the producers of the monoclonal antibody treatment.

"We should be doing everything we can to get patients monoclonal antibody treatments, not cutting allocations of treatment like the Biden administration has done," DeSantis said, according to the press release. "Despite the cuts by the federal government, we want any Floridians that could benefit from this treatment to have access to it. Florida is going to leave no stone unturned when finding treatment for our state, and we are encouraged to have secured a shipment of monoclonal antibody treatments from GlaxoSmithKline."

Dr. John Greene, professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the University of South Florida welcomed the news, but is still concerned that the number of vaccines received would not be enough to provide the necessary volume of monoclonal treatments.

"I am concerned but much less so now that the community levels are dropping, and our need for the monoclonal antibody treatment is dropping as well," Greene told the Sunshine Sentinel. "The monoclonal antibody treatment has benefitted a large number of our cancer patients with mild symptoms to prevent hospitalization and more severe illness and even death."

John Couris, CEO of Tampa General Hospital, questioned why the Biden administration changed the shipment of monoclonal antibody doses before the Florida House Pandemics and Public Emergencies Committee and said that the hospital already is thinking about limiting hours of operation associated with this therapy, the Miami Herald reported.

"I don’t know why they did it, because the supply chain was working perfectly the way it was. This change is going to hurt people in Florida," Couris said, according to the Miami Herald.

According to Click Orlando, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki explained that the purpose of the federal government's distribution plan was to achieve equity among states receiving doses. 

"Just seven states are making up 70% of the orders. Our supply is not unlimited and we believe it should be equitable across states,” Psaki said, according to Click Orlando. "The federal government won't be giving a greater percentage of the monoclonal antibodies to Florida over Oklahoma."

Politico reported that the administration had shipped the antibody treatments to states on an as-needed basis and in early August encouraged states battling the delta variant surge to seek even more supply. Demand from a handful of southern states has exploded since then, prompting officials to become concerned that they were consuming a disproportionate amount of the national supply.

Regeneron announced that the U.S. government has contracted with the company for 1.4 million additional doses, making a total of 3 million doses ordered, according to U.S. News. The United States is paying the company $2,100 per dose, which the government is then providing to patients at no cost, for a total of $2.94 billion for the additional doses. The company will supply the additional doses between now and the end of January 2022.