The White House tore into Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his plans to fight COVID-19 with monoclonal antibodies after the Food and Drug Administration revoked authorization for the treatment.
The new FDA policy only allows those “likely to have been infected with or exposed to a variant that is susceptible to these treatments” to receive the new medication, despite Florida’s leadership advocating for its use.
DeSantis said the move was medical authoritarianism from the Biden administration, but press secretary Jen Psaki had other words to describe the situation.
FDA CLOSES MONOCLONAL ANTIBODY CLINICS IN FLORIDA, DESANTIS SEEKS REVERSAL
“Let’s just take a step back here just to realize how crazy this is,” Psaki said Tuesday. “What the FDA is making clear is that these treatments, the ones that they are fighting over, that the governor [DeSantis] is fighting over, do not work against omicron, and they have side effects. That is what the scientists are saying.”
The White House has approached COVID-19 treatments like a medicine cabinet, Psaki added, with many different approaches, including monoclonal antibodies, preexposure prevention, and oral antivirus treatments. She said 71,000 doses of antivirals have been provided to Florida, including 34,000 additional treatments “that do work against omicron.”
Monoclonal antibody sites across Florida will be closed following the FDA’s decision, though DeSantis may fight the decision.
“This indefensible edict takes treatment out of the hands of medical professionals and will cost some Americans their lives,” DeSantis said in a Monday statement. “There are real-world implications to Biden’s medical authoritarianism — Americans’ access to treatments is now subject to the whims of a failing president.”
DeSantis claimed in a Tuesday tweet that the Biden administration revoked the authorization “without a shred of clinical data.”
Without a shred of clinical data to support its decision, the Biden Administration has revoked the emergency use authorization for lifesaving monoclonal antibody treatments.
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) January 25, 2022
The FDA said that it reversed the treatment’s authorization because the treatment is “highly unlikely to be active against the omicron variant,” which was considered the dominant strain going into the new year. The state health department has said it disagrees with the decision.
DeSantis has aggressively promoted monoclonal antibodies, an artificial form of antibodies that provide the body with new defenses against a particular infectious disease, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
DeSantis is viewed as a rising star within Republican circles due in part to keeping his state mostly open throughout the last year.
That same stance has drawn the ire of Democratic leaders. The White House has frequently clashed with DeSantis and other GOP governors over COVID-19 protocols.
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“We’ve seen, unfortunately, from the beginning in our pandemic response, a range of steps or pushes that have been made through social media platforms, and unfortunately from the mouths of elected officials, advocating for things that don’t work,” Psaki said. “Injecting disinfectant, promoting other pseudoscience, sewing doubt on the effectiveness of vaccines and boosters, and now promoting treatments that don’t work.”
“We know what works: vaccines and boosters. We have a range of doses of things that do work in treatments, and we’re providing those to Florida.”
