Still, patients have reportedly expressed urgency (and difficulty) in accessing the treatments, especially following President Donald Trump’s highly publicized use of them. HHS says it is working with healthcare organizations on provider education and patient awareness.
About 75% of the treatment courses allocated thus far remain available for use, according to the agency.
“One of the challenges we’ve heard is that healthcare providers and patients don’t know how to find where the treatment courses have been delivered. This treatment locator helps meet that challenge, so HHS is encouraging all states to participate,” said the HHS spokesperson.
Right now, for instance, treatment location information is not available for New Jersey, which has the highest COVID-19 per-capita death rate. It is also not available for New York, where in New York City 305 per 100,000 people have died of COVID-19 since January 2020.
The locator shows locations where therapeutics have been delivered that are open to the general public. However, the tool is based on shipments reported by the distributor and is not a guarantee of availability.
THE TREND
The federal government first developed its HHS Protect Hub last year, when it also directed hospitals to bypass the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when reporting COVID-19 patient data.
Although that instruction was met with controversy and chaos, nearly every state now shows hospitals at 100% reporting rates on the HHS Protect hub.
Unfortunately, HHS has not, however, used the hub to address the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, instead, leaving the logistics of allocation up to the states (with varying results).
For more information on how COVID-19 antibody treatment can help treat high-risk patients, click here.