Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency medical service, has announced that it will be collecting blood plasma donations from recovered COVID-19 patients in an effort to produce an antibody treatment for those seriously affected by the virus.
The experimental treatment will see patients get an infusion of antibodies (a so-called ‘passive vaccine’) into their bloodstreams to help them cope with the illness, which differs from vaccines, that are instead designed to enable patients to produce their own antibodies. The collection of plasma from recovered patients is based on the theory that those that have will have developed special antibodies in their blood plasma.
The plasma process was successfully used during the outbreak of SARS in 2002, and MERS in 2012. In Israel, it has also previously been used to treat patients suffering from West Nile fever.
Magen David Adom’s deputy director of blood services, Prof. Eilat Shinar, said: “We are in the organising stages and hope to begin shortly”.
While plasma treatments are commonly used to treat viruses, there is currently no clear evidence that it will prove effective in fighting the coronavirus pandemic. The plasma process was reportedly effective in treating 10 patients in China’s Hubei province. Meanwhile, in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the experimental use of plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients, with it already reportedly underway in New York.
Israel has so far recorded 132 people to have fully recovered from the virus, although this number is expected to increase in the coming weeks as medically the virus is understood to take between four and six weeks to completely recover from.
