Tampa (Fla.) General Hospital CEO John Couris said Sept. 20 that HHS' new distribution system for COVID-19 monoclonal antibody drugs is "plain wrong," the Miami Herald reported.
During a Florida House Pandemics and Public Emergencies Committee meeting Sept. 20, Mr. Couris said: "I don't know why they did it, because the supply chain was working perfectly the way it was. This change is going to hurt people in Florida. It's already starting to make us, for example, think about how we are going to have to limit the hours of operations associated with our ability to provide this lifesaving therapy," according to the Miami Herald.
HHS on Sept. 13 changed the way it distributes antibody drugs as demand surges across the country. Administration sites are no longer able to order the drug directly. Instead, HHS determines the amount of antibody drugs each state receives each week, and state health departments are in charge of deciding which sites get the treatment and how much.
Since the change, hospitals in both Texas and Alabama have reported shortages of monoclonal antibody drugs.
Christina Pushaw, a spokesperson for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, told the Miami Herald that the state could be short as many as 41,000 doses per week because of the change.
Mary Mayhew, the CEO of the Florida Hospital Association, also criticized the change, telling the Miami Herald: "It's the predictability. Hospitals have been administering monoclonal antibody therapy since the moment it came out, and so they've created infrastructure based on determined need. Anything that disrupts that obviously detracts from those goals."
Read the Miami Herald's full article here.