Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) vowed to fight White House health officials in his latest feud with President Joe Biden.
DeSantis said that the Biden administration is withholding a COVID-19 treatment, monoclonal antibodies (MABS), which provides the immune system with weapons against Covid-19.
The treatment is not as effective as the vaccines which led the FDA to withdraw emergency approval from the therapies produced by the companies Regeneron and Eli Lily. Florida has been using MAB treatments from Regeneron, but the FDA has said Omicron is 1,000 times less vulnerable to the treatment.
Last week, Florida was forced to close its MAB treatment centers in response to the FDA’s withdrawal of approval. The state’s controversial Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo argued on Twitter that this decision was not justified.
DeSantis’ office has maintained its desire to get more Regeneron shipments to Florida from the federal stockpile. But supporting the FDA’s decision is a study done by the medical journal Nature Medicine, which showed that MABs are useless against the Omicron variant.
A recent press report noted top DeSantis donor hedge, fund manager Ken Griffin, has $16 million worth of shares in Regeneron, but DeSantis called the charge a “partisan smear.”
