This is leading to shortage as well. Especially as COVID rages in the Southern US.
It's 2100 dollars per dose, which the US Government is subsidizing.
America continues to be wild, man. Free vaccines everywhere, yet these fools are wasting precious resources.
Lanson Jones did not think that the coronavirus would come for him. An avid tennis player in Houston who had not caught so much as a cold during the pandemic, he had refused a vaccine because he worried that it would spoil his streak of good health.
But contracting Covid shattered his faith in his body's defenses — so much so that Mr. Jones, nose clogged and appetite vanished, began hunting for anything to spare himself a nightmarish illness.
The answer turned out to be monoclonal antibodies, a year-old, laboratory-created drug no less experimental than the vaccine. In a glass-walled enclosure at Houston Methodist Hospital this month, Mr. Jones, 65, became one of more than a million patients, including Donald J. Trump and Joe Rogan, to receive an antibody infusion as the virus has battered the United States.
Vaccine-resistant Americans are turning to the treatment with a zeal that has, at times, mystified their doctors, chasing down lengthy infusions after rejecting vaccines that cost one-hundredth as much. Orders have exploded so quickly this summer — to 168,000 doses per week in late August, up from 27,000 in July — that the Biden administration warned states this week of a dwindling national supply.
It's 2100 dollars per dose, which the US Government is subsidizing.
he federal government, which was already covering the cost of the treatment — currently about $2,100 per dose — has now taken over its distribution as well. For the coming weeks, the government has told states to expect scaled-back shipments because of the looming shortages.
With seven Southern states accounting for 70 percent of orders, the new process has unsettled some of their governors, who have made the antibody treatment central to their strategy for enduring a catastrophic wave of the Delta variant.
More supplies are on the way. The federal government bought 1.8 million more doses this week, expected to arrive in the fall and winter. But for now, some hospitals are uncertain of supplies, state health officials said, even as patients keep searching for doses.
"We have providers struggling to get the necessary product," Kody Kinsley, who leads operations for North Carolina's Covid-19 response, said in an interview. "I think what has happened is a classic logistics issue, where all of a sudden there's much more demand."
Amid a din of antivaccine falsehoods, monoclonal antibodies have become the rare coronavirus medicine to achieve near-universal acceptance. Championed by mainstream doctors and conservative radio hosts alike, the infusions have kept the country's death toll — 2,000 per day and climbing — from soaring even higher.
They Shunned Covid Vaccines but Embraced Antibody Treatment (Published 2021)
Championed by doctors and conservative radio hosts alike, monoclonal antibodies for Covid are in high demand — even from those who don’t want a vaccine.
www.nytimes.com
America continues to be wild, man. Free vaccines everywhere, yet these fools are wasting precious resources.