Legal scholars warned officials in Utah that using race to determine which patients could get crucial COVID-19 drugs was likely illegal but the state kept the system in place for months afterward, newly released emails show.
Utah was one of multiple states to develop systems that gave people who weren’t white a better chance of getting monoclonal antibodies, a crucial treatment for COVID-19, in 2020 and 2021.
As late as September 2021, Utah had not had lawyers make sure the system there complied with state and federal law, according to one of the emails.
“I don’t believe this approach has been reviewed legally, but not for lack of us requesting long ago,” Dr. Brandon Webb, an infectious disease physician who helped come up with the guidelines, said in September 2021.
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