& is only for encoding an ampersand in html, it should not be used in htaccess, it’s not html. I don’t think you need to escape it in htaccess.
When you do need to escape a character in htaccess, use a backslash before it.
Maybe i am completely missing something… When that url shows up in google search and someone clicks on it it will be a 404 whether i change the & to a & or not…
Then there must be something else wrong in the rewrite rule or condition.
It’s strange that the string 2199803 is repeated in both the query string and the url path, are you sure that’s correct? Also the last variable ext has no value following the =
Because the query string has no regex ‘wildcards’, so does it need the condition, could you not have the full url in the rule?