Chris Sommerfeldt and Dave Goldiner, New York Daily News
NEW YORK — After being discharged from a premier hospital on Thursday, Rudy Giuliani revealed his treatment for COVID-19 included an experimental drug that is in such short supply that some states have set up lotteries to determine which patients should be lucky enough to receive a dose.
Giuliani, 76, confirmed in a text message to the New York Daily News that he received Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody cocktail during his five-day stay at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., after testing positive for the virus on Sunday.
In a tweet earlier Thursday, the former New York mayor-turned-personal Trump attorney said he was also fortunate enough to receive treatment advice from White House Dr. Sean Conley.
“I walked in with serious symptoms. I walked out better than ever,” Giuliani posted, calling the hospital care “miraculous.”
The Regeneron drug — which Trump also received during his hospitalization for COVID-19 in October — is not available to most people suffering from the virus that has killed more than 291,000 Americans.
According to tallies from the Department of Health and Human Services, 232,709 courses of the antibody drug had been delivered to hospitals across the U.S. as of Wednesday. By contrast, the U.S. is currently in a phase of the pandemic where it reports more than 200,000 new COVID-19 infections on any given day.
Of the delivered Regeneron courses, just 108 were sent to Washington, where Giuliani underwent treatment.
In Colorado, the drug is so scarce that local officials have set up a lottery in order to not give any patient privileged access, while Utah uses a ranked system to determine who’s most likely to benefit, according to The New York Times.
A White House spokesman declined to say if Trump saw to it that Giuliani received the Regeneron treatment.
But Giuliani acknowledged in a radio interview from his hospital bed on Tuesday that his “celebrity” status likely played a role.
“If it wasn’t me, I wouldn’t have been put in a hospital, frankly,” Giuliani said on WABC. “Sometimes when you’re a celebrity, they’re worried if something happens to you they’re going to examine it more carefully, and do everything right.”
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Trump ally, and Housing Secretary Ben Carson also received Regeneron courses during their bouts with COVID-19.
In addition to Regeneron, Giuliani said he received dexamethasone, a steroid, and remdesivir, an antiviral drug, as part of his COVID-19 regimen. Those drugs are more widely available in the U.S., though some parts of the country are still experiencing “regional shortages,” according to Dr. Dean Winslow, an infectious disease physician at Stanford University Hospital.
Giuliani contracted COVID-19 after appearing at press conferences, court hearings and events across the country — often without wearing a face mask — to perpetuate Trump’s baseless claim that Joe Biden’s election victory was facilitated by fraud.
After his Thursday release from the hospital, Giuliani vowed to get right back to pushing Trump’s futile bid to subvert the election.
“Back 100% and lost little time,” he tweeted.
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If you support Trump you deserve cancer.