![]() ![]() ![]() Michael Joyner, who heads the Mayo Clinic program. But as demand for donors has grown, so has the need to wrangle the supply, ensuring that competition for plasma doesn't undercut the larger mission, said Dr. Only a fraction of those infected with COVID-19 have recovered sufficiently to donate, though more are eligible every day. "At some level, they're all competing with the regular blood banks like mine," Busch said. Michael Busch, a professor of laboratory medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and director of the Vitalant Research Institute, one of the largest blood center-based transfusion medicine research programs in the United States. Shots - Health News Antiviral Drug Remdesivir Shows Promise For Treating Coronavirus In NIH StudyĪll three therapies are promising, but all three require human blood plasma, said Dr. Rich with antibodies, convalescent plasma from COVID-19 patients is being tested as a possible therapy to promote recovery in people who are critically ill with the disease. "If we could help anybody, we'd go every day," said John Haering, 63, a retired railroad manager who spent two weeks in a hospital in Japan after testing positive for the virus.ĭonors such as Berrent and the Haerings are needed to supply the building blocks of potentially lifesaving treatments. The money was a nice surprise for the Haerings, though they said they were motivated more by the opportunity to prevent others from suffering. "Given the urgency and importance of collecting convalescent plasma from the small population of recovered COVID-19 patients, BioLife is currently offering an added incentive for the first two donations from recovered COVID-19 patients," Takeda spokesperson Julia Ellwanger said in an email. BioLife, a paid plasma collection site, gave them gift cards totaling $800 for donations of their blood plasma. ![]() Melanie and John Haering contracted COVID-19 on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. She went on to found Survivor Corps, a grassroots clearinghouse that connects people who have recovered from COVID-19 with organizations eager to collect their blood. "When I saw that email going around, I saw what was going to happen in the landscape," said Berrent, a photographer and mother of two who lives on Long Island. Berrent, 45, said she immediately recognized the need for the precious plasma - and the demand that would follow. Within a day, she had received 30 emails from people urging her to donate blood.įriends and acquaintances, aware of her diagnosis, passed along a pressing request from New York's Mount Sinai Health System, one of the first centers to seek plasma, a blood component, to be used in a therapy that might fight the deadly disease. After testing positive for COVID-19, Diana Berrent established Survivor Corps, a grassroots clearinghouse for COVID-19 survivors interested in donating blood plasma to organizations developing therapies that might combat the disease.ĭiana Berrent learned she had tested positive for COVID-19 on a Wednesday in mid-March. ![]()
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