DeSantis opens new battle with Biden over Covid treatments

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis has picked a new fight with the Biden administration over Covid treatments.

DeSantis shut down the five state administration sites he opened last week after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday cut Florida’s weekly allotment of monoclonal antibody cocktails. DeSantis fired back at the Biden administration for pulling the medicines, claiming the federal government withdrew the treatments without evidence.

“We're going to fight back against this because this is just wrong,” DeSantis said Tuesday at a news conference in Crawfordville, about 20 miles from the Capitol in Tallahassee. “This is not the way you know that you help people.”

DeSantis’ criticism came after the FDA stated that two monoclonal treatments, each made by Regeneron and Eli Lilly, are not effective against the Omicron variant, which is responsible for the vast majority of infections in the U.S. Federal officials would rather save those doses for use on other variants.

DeSantis, who did not say how he will respond to the Biden administration, also criticized Biden for failing to reserve monoclonal treatments before the wintertime when the rate of infections has historically gone up.

“They had months and months and months to stockpile this, and they chose not to do it,” DeSantis said. “Part of it is I think there's politics at play.”

DeSantis’ closure of the treatment centers is the latest rift between Florida and the Biden administration over Covid. Over the summer and early fall, DeSantis and Biden fought over the Republican governor’s refusal to allow mask mandates in schools — a conflict that led the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office to open an investigation into whether Florida was violating the rights of students with disabilities.

In September, DeSantis attacked the Biden administration for distributing monoclonal treatments to states across the nation while Florida and a handful of southern states at the time were taking up the bulk of antibody treatment orders.

Monoclonal antibody treatments have been proven to help people recover from the infection faster, but experts believe their effectiveness depends on the strain of the virus. Already, some hospitals in New York City have said they would stop providing the Regeneron and Eli Lilly treatments to patient, according to The New York Times. DeSantis has also heavily pushed the treatments.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday defended the Biden administration, saying that the federal government has provided 71,000 antiretrovirals to Florida, including 34,000 to combat Omicron.

“Let's just take a step back here just to realize how crazy this is,” Psaki said. “What the FDA is making clear is that these treatments, the ones they are fighting over, the ones the governor is fighting over, do not work against Omicron and they have side effects.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday also earlier in the day said the agency continues to provide medicines that have been shown to be effective in treating omicron, including antiviral pills from Pfizer and Merck.

“The Administration is focused on making sure that, if an American gets sick with COVID-19, they get a treatment that actually works,” the HHS spokesperson said in a statement. “Both Regeneron and Eli Lilly say their monoclonal antibody treatments are ineffective against Omicron [and] several independent studies have also shown they aren’t working against Omicron.”

Covid-19 has killed more than 63,000 people in Florida since the first infections were reported nearly two years ago. It was ravaged by the Delta variant over the summer leading to record-breaking hospitalizations but has generally fared better under the less-deadly but more transmissible Omicron variant.

DeSantis and state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo have argued that all of the monoclonals made available by the Health and Human Services Department are at least somewhat effective.

“The Federal Government has failed to adequately provide the United States with adequate outpatient treatment options for COVID-19,” Ladapo wrote in statement sent by the governor’s office Monday night. “Now, they are scrambling to cover up a failure to deliver on a promise to ‘shut down the virus.'”

The state Department of Health, which Ladapo oversees as the agency’s secretary, announced late Monday that it was closing state-run monoclonal antibody treatment administration sites “until further notice.”

CDR Maguire, a disaster-consulting company contracted with the state to help distribute monoclonal doses, also alerted patients about canceled appointments by blaming the Biden administration over text Monday night. The message was sent about two hours before the governor’s office distributed a statement on the FDA decision.

“The Biden Administration has removed the ability for any state to administer Regeneron’s REGEN-COV or Eli Lilly’s bamlanivimab and etesevimab,” according to the text, which the company confirmed. “As a result, your appointment has been canceled.”

The message sent by CDR Maguire prompted Democratic Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to issue a Tuesday letter to the company’s president, Carlos Duart, saying the text only worsened ongoing confusion spurred by limited monoclonal doses.

“Unfortunately, we were also made aware that your team has communicated directly with residents in Miami-Dade County without sharing complete information about the reason their upcoming appointments were canceled,” Levine Cava wrote. “The messages our residents received from your team are deeply concerning since they seem motivated by political interests and not acting in our community’s best interests.”

A federal database shows that Florida is still slated to receive 34,216 doses of monoclonal treatments from the Health and Human Services agency this week. This total includes 3,216 doses of sotrovimab, which is proven to be effective against treating the Omicron variant.

Gary Fineout and Matt Dixon contributed to this report.