The first US coronavirus patients are being treated with convalescent plasma therapy. Will it work? Not even the doctors know
April 2, 2020 / Elizabeth Weise and Mark Johnson, USA TODAY
In New York and Houston, pints of straw-colored convalescent plasma have dripped into the veins of five U.S. coronavirus patients. Hundreds more there and across the nation are set to follow.
Whether the plasma, derived from the blood of people who recovered from COVID-19, will help them fight off the devastating disease caused by the new coronavirus that has killed more than 5,100 Americans is unknown. In less than three weeks, the effort to find out has gone from an idea to a worldwide program entirely self-organized by medical researchers.
Like so much about the desperate efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s seat-of-the-pants medicine. Doctors don’t know whether it will work but hope to find out in weeks, not the years it typically takes for studies to yield answers.
“Our treatments began on Saturday,” said Ania Wajnberg, an internist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City who directs its Serum Antibody program.
