Recovered From Coronavirus? Heres How You Can Help – The New York Times

This is the most important thing recovered patients can do to help.

Once a person recovers from Covid-19, his or her blood contains antibodies in its plasma that can fight the virus. Those antibodies can be extracted from a donors blood and given to a severely ill patient via transfusion, with the hope that the donors antibodies will help the patient recover.

The use of convalescent plasma plasma from people convalescing, or recovering to treat illnesses has been around for a century, as doctors used the process to treat patients as far back as the Spanish flu in 1918. More recently, the treatment has been used on patients with polio, measles, SARS and other illnesses, and there is anecdotal evidence and new data that show it could be effective in treating patients with severe cases of Covid-19, according to Dr. Pampee Young, chief medical officer of the American Red Cross.

We certainly are getting anecdotal reports in, Dr. Young said, that seem to be very positive, adding that some people who have received convalescent plasma are stabilizing and requiring less oxygen.

Still, there is not yet conclusive evidence the procedure will be effective in treating Covid-19, and the process is very early on.

A spokeswoman for the Mount Sinai Health System in New York said that about 30 patients had received the treatment so far, with a few hundred more expected in the coming weeks. Dr. Young said the Red Cross collected only one donation of convalescent plasma the week of March 30 with several more expected last week, and that it could be as long as half a year until it is definitively known whether it works.

Still, with a small, but growing, body of research that is indicating positive results, we can be somewhat optimistic about convalescent plasma as being an effective therapy, Dr. Young said.

To qualify, donors must pass normal blood-donation requirements and be symptom-free of Covid-19 for at least 14 days, and, in most cases, must have positive results from a test. (Other restrictions may apply, depending on the organization.) Recovered patients can donate once every 28 days, and the process to donate can take 90 minutes to two and a half hours.

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Recovered From Coronavirus? Heres How You Can Help - The New York Times