Republican representatives from New York, including Claudia Tenney, Lee Zeldin, Chris Jacobs, Elise Stefanik, and Nicole Malliotakis, wrote a pointed letter to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra urging the Biden administration to revise its decision to pause the supply of lifesaving coronavirus treatments to states.
Last week, the Biden administration decided to halt allocation of Regeneron and Eli Lilly treatments over concerns about their effectiveness against the omicron variant, which appears to be a milder form of the illness.
“With hospital capacity limited in much of our region, many in our medical community have requested additional options for treating their patients, not fewer,” the lawmakers wrote.
“They repeatedly state that any tools to prevent patients from being hospitalized and placed on a ventilator significantly increases the likelihood of a full recovery. This means access to multiple therapeutic options is a win-win for both patients and providers,” they continued, urging the administration to reconsider its initial decision and give clinicians the tools to make the calls — not the federal government.
They wrote in part:
With a severe shortage of these treatments in the private market and with other therapies subject to strict limits, this change threatens to leave a large portion of vulnerable patients without treatment options. As a result, we request an immediate explanation on why HHS decided to halt distribution of monoclonal antibody therapies instead of simply adjusting guidance for clinicians. We also request information on HHS’s plan to address the needs of patients who cannot take the other federally approved COVID-19 therapeutics.
While the lawmakers acknowledged that “some monoclonal antibody therapies are not effective against omicron,” they noted that “the threshold of 80% prevalence still means there are up to 20% of patients who could benefit from this treatment – this number could conceivably be even higher given changes that have been made to datasets.” Over the past year, they continued, such treatments had reduced hospitalization by 70 percent in vulnerable patients:
Additionally, many of the individuals who seek monoclonal antibody therapies have conditions or are on medications that would prevent them from taking other forms of treatment, leaving monoclonal antibodies therapies as their best and maybe even only therapeutic option. In addition, we have heard from medical professionals that even though an increasing number of cases in our region are now omicron, delta cases still represent a large percentage of severe cases requiring further treatments. For these cases, the monoclonal antibodies that you are now withholding remain the best therapeutic treatment. These medical professionals have further expressed a desire for better testing capabilities to tell omicron cases from delta, so they can tailor therapeutic treatments appropriately. This is the kind of innovation we must deliver.
“We look forward to hearing back regarding what actions you are taking to restart distribution of this vitally important tool to combat COVID and deliver life-saving relief to the most vulnerable populations,” the lawmakers added.
This week, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo wrote a similar letter to Becerra, calling out the federal government for “actively preventing the effective distribution of monoclonal antibody treatments in the U.S.”
As of Thursday, Washington D.C. led the U.S. in the daily average of coronavirus cases per capita. New York, with 215 cases per 100,000 people, was second.