Mercy Health-St. Rita’s has joined forces with a national team of doctors and scientists who are experimenting with new COVID-19 treatments with the help of people who have already beat the virus.
The Food and Drug Administration has started what is called the Expanded Access Program, or EAP, that will use plasma from a recovered COVID-19 patient as a treatment for someone currently sick with the virus.
The Mayo Clinic is the lead institution in the program, as designated by the FDA, but expanded access to the program includes registered health care providers across the country-- St. Rita’s being one of them.
Dr. Matt Owens, the chief clinical officer at St. Rita's says, “We’re very pleased that we’ve been considered and accepted to be participating with them, to not only help with the potential treatment for our local folks suffering from this disease in our community but to perhaps help to advance the science behind this and trying to find more effective treatments for the future.”
The convalescent plasma will be given to patients with COVID-19 who are at high risk of progression to a severe or life-threatening stage of the virus. This method has been safely used for treatment of several different pathogens over the past century like polio and measles.
Although St. Rita’s is eager to start helping people figure out how to fight off the virus, resources are low for the plasma right now.
“At this time we expect the availability of the plasma to be a bit limited," says Dr. Owen. "Because obviously we haven’t had a lot of people with positive disease who have recovered for 28 days or more so at first this will be a limited resource."
Qualifying donors are people who have fully recovered from COVID-19 and haven’t shown symptoms in at least 28 days. To find a list of local participating blood donation centers, visit the American Red Cross website at redcrossblood.org.
