JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office is pushing back against a report that a top donor’s hedge fund has a significant stake in a COVID-19 antibody treatment promoted by the governor.
An Associated Press report, “DeSantis top donor invests in COVID drug governor promotes,” noted that Ken Griffin, who has contributed more than $10 million to a DeSantis-friendly political committee, runs Citadel, a hedge fund that holds millions of dollars of stock in Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, the maker of the treatment the governor is promoting.
DeSantis acknowledged the report during a Wednesday news conference in Pembroke Pines, where he announced the opening of a clinic that will administer doses of Regeneron’s drug cocktail, one of a dozen sites the governor hopes to open throughout the state by this weekend.
“There’s always people trying to push political agendas, partisan narratives, regardless of facts, trying to gaslight people, trying to pursue their own interests, even if it’s not going to be helpful for people, even if it may dissuade someone from seeking a life-saving treatment,” DeSantis said. “This is no place for phony narratives, for political posturing or for partisanship.”
For the past week, DeSantis has been touring Florida to announce the openings of antibody clinics for those who have contracted COVID-19. The tour, which began Aug. 12 in Jacksonville, continued on Thursday with stops in Ormond Beach and Hudson, where additional clinics were announced.
While the governor appeared to rebut a narrative about the antibody therapy’s cost Wednesday, the Associated Press story did not say Floridians or the state would have to pay for the treatments.
“Whatever Florida is bringing down, the state of Florida is not paying anything for and then whatever a patient gets, the patient is not paying anything,” DeSantis said. “So please do not be dissuaded, thinking that they are going to charge you $2,000 or $1,500 or whatever. That is complete, complete garbage.”
The AP’s story mentioned the Regeneron treatment is more expensive than a COVID-19 vaccine but noted the federal government was picking up the tab. After awarding Regeneron a $450 million contract in 2020, the federal government purchased the remainder of its 1.5 million-dose supply in January.
The governor’s communications staff has taken criticism of the AP’s coverage a step further.
Christina Pushaw, the governor’s press secretary, blasted what she called a “hit piece” in a series of tweets responding to the AP report. DeSantis’ staffers also contacted multiple news organizations, including the AP and News4JAX, requesting that the story’s headline be changed.
News4Jax, an AP newswire subscriber, declined the request and referred the governor’s office to the AP.
“It’s incredible — the corporate media insists for weeks that Governor DeSantis is ‘doing nothing’ about COVID. But when he promotes and expands access to life saving treatment for all Floridians, the same media attacks him for it,” Pushaw told the Daily Caller. “This irresponsible mockery of journalism is reprehensible, because when a clinically proven treatment is unduly politicized by outlets like AP, it might discourage someone COVID patients from getting the treatment that could save their lives.”
Pushaw also criticized the AP report for advancing a “baseless political narrative that Governor DeSantis supports” the antibody treatment over vaccines, saying: “Citadel holds far more shares of Pfizer and Moderna than Regeneron.”
Yet the AP’s story noted that Citadel’s stake in Regeneron makes up a “tiny fraction” of its $39 billion portfolio and pales in comparison to that of leading institutional shareholders, such as BlackRock and Vanguard.
NASDAQ data shows Citadel is not among the company’s top 100 institutional shareholders. As of June 30, Citadel held nearly 58,000 shares of Regeneron stock, worth roughly $36 million.
The stock price closed at $655.63 Thursday, an 8-percent increase compared to the same time last week.
The use of antibody therapies in the fight against COVID-19 has been embraced by both state and federal officials, with the White House estimating last week that more than 600,000 patients had received them, resulting in saved lives.
Research has shown that Regeneron’s treatment reduces the risk of hospitalization or death by approximately 70 percent, and a study performed by the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that Regeneron’s cocktail and other dual-antibody therapies have shown promise against drug-resistant variants of the virus.
“When the initial [monoclonal antibody treatments] were approved, you had Regeneron and Eli Lilly...both were considered effective against the previous variant, the alpha [variant],” DeSantis said Thursday. “We’re offering the Regeneron because it has been proven to be effective against Delta whereas the Eli Lilly has not. And then Regeneron is also the only monoclonal that’s approved for use as a (treatment to prevent disease from occurring).”
News4Jax reached out to the governor’s office early Thursday with follow-up questions about its criticism of the AP report and what message DeSantis had for Floridians following its release. No response was received by Thursday afternoon.