Coronavirus (COVID-19) Discussion Thread

[haxxiy]

SvennoJ said:

S.Peelman said:
Here in The Netherlands they’re starting an experiment with supplying blood plasma of patients that have been cured of Covid19, and thus contains antibodies, to patients in serious condition. The hope is that the sick person’s body will copy the injected antibodies and improve a patients sickness. They’ll be administering these antibodies to 426 patients.

Same thing here, initial test with 1,000 patients. Hopefully it helps

https://brighterworld.mcmaster.ca/articles/canadian-clinical-trial-tests-old-plasma-therapy-for-covid-19/

The study is expected to be carried out in every province, and likely each territory. The initial number of people involved is approximately 1,000 patients.

“When people have recovered from COVID-19 infection, we are hoping they will donate a unit of plasma which is essentially the clear portion of blood where all the antibodies are,” said Arnold, an associate professor of medicine and the director of the McMaster Centre for Transfusion Research.


The more places try this the more accurate the results.

I assume there will be some cost versus benefit analysis involved, and this will only be applied to certain severe cases considering the small, but significant risk of graft-versus-host disease that can come with that kind of transfusion.

That being said, the fact that one people can donate their plasma up to three others is an encouraging sign of how strong the immune response to Covid-19 actually is. Perhaps it could last closer to immunity to the original SARS (~ 30 months) than immunity to other coronaviruses (~ 18 months).