Daily US Times: If you get sick with Covid-19, don’t expect to get the same treatment as the US President Donald Trump.
It may seem obvious the country’s President would receive extra attention and the best care possible. But some of the treatment he’s getting is not even available to the general public.
That fact may have been lost on President Trump when he told millions of followers “Don’t be afraid of Covid.”
“I feel better than I did 20 years ago!” the President tweeted Monday — not mentioning that other Americans with the deadly disease don’t have access to the drugs and treatment he received.
Before he was taken to the Walter Reed hospital on Friday, Trump received Regeneron’s experimental antibody therapy — which may reduce levels of coronavirus and has shown promising results in a trial involving 275 patients.
But the treatment has not yet received emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Biotech company Regeneron said it provided the drug after receiving a “compassionate use” request from the President’s doctors.
The Mayo Clinic said, for most people, “getting access to not-yet-approved drugs through a compassionate use request can be a long and challenging process,” listing a series of requirements that most patients would need to meet.
But Trump received the therapeutic on Friday, just one day after he tested positive for Covid-19, the White House press secretary and Trump’s doctor said.
Epidemiologist Dr. Seema Yasmin said: “Of course, this is the President of the USA. He is going to get the kitchen sink thrown at him medically, offered all there is — whether it’s authorized under emergency use or not, in the case of the antibody treatment.”
“But then there are (almost) 210,000 Americans who have died over the past few months because the pandemic response has been so bad. And they certainly didn’t get access to this kind of treatment.”
That’s not the only advantage Trump has compared to the hundreds of thousands of other Americans who have been hospitalized with the Covid-19.
You may read: President leaves Walter Reed hospital to continue Covid-19 treatment