The federal government’s decision to temporarily pause distribution of critical COVID-19 treatments in response to significantly overestimated Omicron projections could be deadly, a furious Maryland doctor warned.
“People are definitely going to die because of this,” Dr. Ron Elfenbein, the medical director and CEO of FirstCall Medical Center in Gambrills, Maryland, told Fox News on Wednesday (Dec. 29).
The Department of Health and Human Services paused the distribution of monoclonal antibody treatments from Regeneron and Eli Lilly on December 23, citing data that the therapies are less effective against the Omicron variant, which three days earlier, the CDC said made up the vast majority—73 percent%—of new COVID-19 cases in the US.
But a week later, in a stunning revision, the CDC drastically reduced its estimate of Omicron cases in the US for the week before Christmas, saying that the variant accounted for just 22.5% percent of all infections as of December 18.