According to the New York Times, President Donald Trump, Chris Christie, Ben Carson, and Rudy Giuliani received limited COVID-19 antibody treatments that hospitals are distributing through a lottery system.
“If it wasn’t me, I wouldn’t have been put in a hospital, frankly,” Giuliani said. “Sometimes, when you’re a celebrity, they’re worried if something happens to you, they’re going to examine it more carefully and do everything right.”
The Food and Drug Administration approved the antibody therapies created by Eli Lilly and Regeneron last month. According to Axios, 278,000 doses of the two therapies have been given out. Some believe that recoveries could give people the impression that the virus is not dangerous. It’s the wrong impression to form as there is not enough for everyone.
“One of the challenges is the E.U.A criteria really are so broad, it could be half of the people with COVID could qualify, but there is clearly not enough,” Erin Fox, the senior pharmacy director from the University of Utah Health, said. “Unfortunately, that leaves each hospital or each state to develop their own rationing criteria.”
The treatment is in short supply, while there is high demand. Colorado is using a lottery system to give access fairly.
“That’s one of the reasons why we decided that we would allocate this only through the state and only through this random allocation process,” Dr. Matthew Wynia, director of the Center of Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado, said. “So that no one could get a leg up by virtue of their special connections.”
“The notion that we are going to be able to treat a significant percentage of the people who qualify for the drug with the drug – it’s not going to happen,” Dr. Peter L. Slavin, the president of Massachusetts General Hospital, said in an interview.
