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Lanson Jones didn’t think the coronavirus was coming for him. An aspiring tennis player in Houston, who didn’t even catch a cold during the pandemic, refused a vaccine because she was worried it would impair her health.

But contracting Covid shattered his faith in his body’s defenses – so much so that Mr. Jones, with a stuffy nose and no appetite, began looking for anything to save himself from a nightmarish illness.

The answer turned out to be monoclonal antibodies, a lab-created one-year drug no less experimental than the vaccine. Mr. Jones, 65, was one of more than a million patients who this month received antibody infusions from more than a million patients, including Donald J. Trump and Joe Rogan, as the virus ravaged the United States in a glass-walled enclosure at Houston Methodist Hospital. . .

Vaccine-resistant Americans turn to treatment with enthusiasm that sometimes surprises their doctors, and pursue long infusions after rejecting vaccines that cost as much as one percent. Orders have exploded so quickly this summer – from 27,000 in July to 168,000 doses a week at the end of August – the Biden administration this week warned states of a dwindling national supply.

The federal government, which has already covered the cost of the treatment—currently about $2,100 per dose—has taken over its distribution as well. In the coming weeks, the government has told states to expect shipments to shrink due to impending famines.

While seven Southern states accounted for 70 percent of orders, the new process has some governors, who put antibody therapy at the center of their strategy to withstand a disastrous wave of the Delta variant, unsettled.

More materials are on the way. The federal government has purchased another 1.8 million doses this week, expected to arrive in the fall and winter. But state health officials said some hospitals are unsure about the supplies for now, even as patients continue to seek doses.

“We have providers struggling to get the necessary product,” Kody Kinsley, who heads North Carolina’s Covid-19 response operations, said in an interview. “I think it’s a classic logistics problem where there’s suddenly a lot more demand.”

Among the anti-vaccine lies, monoclonal antibodies have become the rare coronavirus drug that is almost universally accepted. Supported by both mainstream doctors and conservative radio presenters, the infusions prevented the country’s daily death rate of 2,000 and higher.

After months of work by President Biden and Southern governors to support treatments, they have won the favor of vaccine rejecters, who say the fear and uncertainty of actually catching Covid has made them desperate for an antidote.

“People you love and trust haven’t said anything negative about it,” said Mr. Jones about antibody therapy. And I’ve heard nothing but negative things about the side effects of the vaccine and how quickly the vaccine is being developed.”

Some Republican governors set up antibody clinics in defiance of vaccine orders, disappointing even the strongest proponents of some drugs. Increasing vaccination rates would eliminate the need for many of the costly antibody treatments in the first place, the scientists said. Infusions take about an hour and a half, including later monitoring, and require constant attention from nurses, where difficult situations often have no time to spare.

D., an infectious disease specialist and chief of population health at the San Diego Family Health Centers. “It’s choking up resources, it’s hard to give, and a vaccine costs $20 and can prevent almost all of it,” said Christian Ramers. community based provider. Forcing antibodies while underestimating vaccines is “like investing in car insurance without investing in brakes,” he said.

Government-supplied monoclonal antibodies, produced by Regeneron and Eli Lilly, have been shown to significantly shorten patients’ symptoms and reduce the risk of hospitalization by 70 percent in the case of Regeneron’s antibody cocktail. Single-session treatments use lab-made copies of antibodies that people naturally produce when fighting an infection.

Patients and doctors alike missed treatments during the winter months when infections increased. But hospitals and health centers have increased their offerings by converting dental clinics, mobile units and auditoriums into infusion centers. In states like Texas, where elective surgeries have been delayed to make room for Covid-19 patients, operating room nurses have been deployed to deliver infusions.

One factor driving demand is that many patients, including vaccine skeptics, are spreading word about their seemingly miraculous recovery.

“They’re like, ‘I have Covid, I want this treatment, my friend or family told me about it,'” said Jennifer Berry, director of nursing infusion services at Houston Methodist. “Now the word is over.”

At Houston Methodist, nurses delivered nearly 1,100 treatments at eight sites in the first week of September, which was more than double any week last winter. The hospital cut the average time between orders and infusions from three days to two days earlier this month, giving patients a better chance to fight off infections.

Balancing infusions with more seriously ill Covid patients this summer forced the hospital in one case to move a monoclonal antibody clinic to a strip mall store.

But Vicki Brownewell, chief executive of the hospital program, said the Texas health department helped by providing 19 nurses for a different Houston Methodist infusion clinic. The Biden administration also invested $150 million to expand access to monoclonal antibodies, and Houston Methodist used federal money to arrange medical taxis for patients struggling with transportation.

Even so, infusions remain out of reach for many. Given the high demands on staff and the need to create separate infusion rooms for infectious patients, some communities, particularly in rural areas, do not have clinics.

Dr. In San Diego, Ramers said, some large, nonprofit hospitals have decided not to administer the antibodies at all due to logistical difficulties, leaving wealthier, well-insured patients to hunt for doses at their publicly funded clinic. Some nurses he hired for infusions left for short, better-paid assignments in intensive care units.

Dr. “The natural, capitalist incentives for profit for healthcare organizations don’t really support doing that,” Ramers said. “There is much work.”

At least 1.1 million of the 2.4 million doses of monoclonal antibodies shipped nationally were used. It’s difficult to determine exactly how many are still sitting on the shelves due to reporting gaps. Still, dwindling federal supplies and increased demand from less-vaccinated Southern states have resulted in what many states describe as major shortfalls in deliveries.

North Carolina providers said the health department there is requesting 15,000 weekly doses, more than double the amount allocated by the federal government. Florida said its last weekly allocation left clinics there under 41,000 doses of what they wanted.

Hospitals could previously order medications themselves. But the Department of Health and Human Services will now decide how many doses each state will receive based on case rates and treatment use. State governments, in turn, will decide doses for individual sites.

The new ordering process, which the Biden administration says will ensure “fair distribution,” has some supporters of the drug uneasy. Florida Governor Republican Ron DeSantis warned on Thursday that state officials were unprepared for the new responsibility of distributing doses.

And in heavily vaccinated states like New York, people coordinating treatments leave hospitals with such underdoses that they close their programs, fearing that shipments will drop due to low case rates. Some hospitals have recently reported that the number of vaccinated patients receiving infusions has increased.

Diana Berrent, founder of Survivor Corps, which works to help patients find monoclonal antibody treatments, said involving state governments would lead to delays: “You’re creating 50 new layers of bureaucracy,” she said.

Doctors warned that antibody treatments alone would not be able to keep up with the ballooning epidemics. While any vaccine protects others from exposure, a single infusion only helps a single patient. Infusions should be given within 10 days of symptoms; they are useless for most hospitalized patients. And getting the antibodies once doesn’t stop people from getting seriously ill if they catch the virus again later.

Medical leader of Houston Methodist’s infusion program, Dr. “Something like this cannot scale,” Howard Huang said.

As a result, health officials have warned that vaccine skeptics may become so enamored with monoclonal antibodies and become more resistant to the preventive vaccine.

A few days after his infusion, patient Mr. Jones in Houston left his quarantined bedroom and returned to his job as a landscape architect. But he was still weighing whether to get the vaccine.

He said his doctor was pushing for the shot. But the monoclonal antibodies worked so well that he decided to go back for another infusion if he got Covid-19 again.

“If I can go and feel as good as I do now, man, I’d rather not get a newly developed vaccine,” he said. “It still pisses me off.”

Rebecca Robbins contributed to the reporting.