Health" Blood Plasma Treatment for Coronavirus Set to Get Its First Trial Run in New York

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Blood Plasma Treatment for Coronavirus Set to Get Its First Trial Run in New York

FDA Is 'Looking at Everything' to Treat Coronavirus, Including Blood Plasma Treatment
FDA Is 'Looking at Everything' to Treat Coronavirus, Including Blood Plasma Treatment
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BY ALICE PARK

MARCH 26, 2020
The New York Blood Center (NYBC) is the first blood-gathering organization in the U.S. to collect plasma from COVID-19 patients to use as a possible treatment for the disease.
Before antibiotics rendered the practice moot, it was common to treat infectious bacterial diseases by infusing the blood of recovered patients into those struggling with infection. That approach has also been tried against viral infections like H1N1 influenza, SARS and MERS, with inconsistent success. Some patients benefited, but other did not and doctors don’t have a clear understanding of why. But during an evolving pandemic like COVID-19, plasma-based treatments can provide a critical stop-gap while therapies and vaccines are developed.
The idea is relatively simple, and based on the concept of passive immunity. People who have recovered from an COVID-19 infection have likely done so because their immune systems developed strong immune responses to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the illness. As a key part of their response, they make antibodies, including both general microbial killers and specialized cells that target just the proteins found on SARS-CoV-2. In theory, these antibodies could be taken from a recovered COVID-19 patient, and infused into someone recently infected with the virus. “The thought is that if you passively infuse someone who is actively sick, the antibodies may temporarily help a sick person fight infection more effectively, and get well a little bit quicker,” says Dr. Bruce Sachais, chief medical officer of New York Blood Center Enterprises.

While the therapy is still experimental, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on March 24 allowed doctors to use plasma from recovered patients to treat those with “serious or immediately life-threatening COVID-19 infections” under an emergency approval system. Doctors can apply to the FDA to use it for their patients, and the agency will review the requests quickly and make decisions on a case by case basis.
Sachais says NYBC is ready to begin collecting blood from recovered patients who have tested negative for active viral infection, and met other requirements to ensure their plasma is safe to infuse. The first donors will likely come from hospitals who have successfully treated patients, and the donated plasma will go back to those hospitals to treat their sickest patients. This week, Mount Sinai Health System announced that it would begin working with NYBC to start treating some of its more severely ill patients with the therapy. But Sachais says he is working with other blood centers and hospitals to create a system where donated plasma can be stored and shared among them.
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For now, each patient will likely receive one unit of plasma, which is about 200-250 cubic centimeters. But because the amount of antibody in donors may vary, researchers are currently seeking ways to produce a more concentrated and consistent dose. Emergent BioSolutions, a biopharmaceutical company in Maryland, is working on a way to pool plasma from recovered patients and use that to create concentrated doses of antibodies, for example. That way, scientists don’t have to select out donors with the highest amount of antibodies, and can accept plasma from a wide pool of recovered patients, according to Laura Saward, head of Emergent’s therapeutic business unit.
The company is also looking to other sources for the antibodies—specifically, horses. It already relies on horses to produce treatments for botulism, and its researchers are adapting that platform to produce antibody-rich plasma against COVID-19. The horses are exposed to fragments of SARS-CoV-2 and generate antibodies to the virus, and because of the animals’ sizes, the volume of plasma they produce could help to treat more than one patient at a time. “We could quickly get to the point where we have multiple horses donating plasma on a weekly basis to help continuously produce those antibody doses,” says Saward. “The thought is that a smaller dose of equine plasma would be effective in people because there would be higher levels of antibody in smaller doses.”
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Because Emergent’s technology involves additional steps than processing plasma from one person and infusing it into another, Saward says testing of the company’s human and equine plasma will take a few months. The company plans to begin testing its products in people toward the end of the summer.
Sachais is also considering ways to concentrate the antibody in smaller doses of plasma. But in the meantime, as more people receive units of donated plasma through blood centers like NYBC, doctors will learn more about how much protection the plasma provides, and determine if it could be helpful in preventing infection in high risk people like health care workers. “We are working with national organizations as well to share our experience with them,” he says, “and potentially share inventory of plasma as time goes on, depending on how the pandemic plays out, to make sure the product is collected and distributed where it’s needed.”

New York Center First to Collect Plasma From COVID-19 Patients as Possible Treatment

Doctors are eager to start infusing sick coronavirus patients with plasma from people who have recovered from the disease

time.com

 

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First Plasma Donations Sought from Recovered COVID-19 Patients
By Spectrum News Staff New York City
PUBLISHED 12:43 PM ET Mar. 25, 2020


NEW YORK - The New York Blood Center is collecting the first blood plasma donations from recovered COVID-19 patients.
Those still suffering from coronavirus would be transfused with the donor’s plasma.

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• CDC Coronavirus Page
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Doctors hope the antibodies in the plasma will help clear the virus more rapidly.
The FDA approved the treatment Tuesday.
The blood center says if the treatment is successful they will scale up the process and activate a network to serve hospitals nationwide.

First Plasma Donations Sought from Recovered COVID-19 Patients

The FDA approved the treatment Tuesday.

www.ny1.com

 

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Researchers Push for Mass Blood Tests as a Covid-19 Strategy
While it might seem wasteful to test the seemingly healthy, tracking antibodies could show how widely the virus has spread—and who may now be immune.

PHOTOGRAPH: BILL DIODATO/GETTY IMAGES

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NEXT WEEK, BLOOD banks across the Netherlands are set to begin a nationwide experiment. As donations arrive—about 7,000 of them per week is the norm—they’ll be screened with the usual battery of tests that keep the blood supply safe, plus one more: a test for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. Then, in a few weeks, another batch of samples will get the same test. And after that, depending on the numbers, there could be further rounds. The blood donors should be fairly representative of Dutch adults ages 18 to 75, and most importantly, they’ll all be healthy enough for blood donation—or at least outwardly so.
Testing thousands of samples from seemingly healthy people might sound a little wasteful, with all we’ve been hearing about testing shortages around the world. But that’s precisely the point, says Hans Zaaijer, a microbiologist at Amsterdam University Medical Center and Sanquin, the Dutch blood bank. He wants to see how many people have already had the disease and could possibly be immune.

How Does the Coronavirus Spread? (And Other Covid-19 FAQs)
Plus: What it means to “flatten the curve,” and everything else you need to know about the coronavirus.
BY MEGHAN HERBST

Nobody knows the true scope of Covid-19 infections: How many people have it and how severe the disease is across different demographics. One reason for that is limited testing, which has made many cases invisible to those keeping count. Was that mystery fever you had a few weeks ago the novel coronavirus? At this point, nobody can say for sure. The other reason is that a still unknown but sizable percentage of infected people carry on through a Covid-19 infection without symptoms. That stealthiness has been implicated in the virus’s speedy spread.
But a simple blood test, like the kind Zaaijer’s team will perform on the donated blood, can tell whether it carries antibodies to Covid-19, which are produced when a person’s immune system responds after an infection. Identifying what proportion of the population has already been infected is key to making the right decisions about containment. “We hope that this will show us how fast immunity is increasing in the population,” Zaaijer says. The eventual target? When 60 percent of the country’s population has antibodies to the disease. That’s when Zaaijer and other infectious disease experts hope the pandemic shuts down on its own, provided immunity is conferred and lasts.
Tests like the one to be used in the Netherlands are different from the ones typically used for diagnosis. Those look for genetic material collected from throat or nasal swabs, and they are analyzed using a technique called PCR, or polymerase chain reaction. That provides a reliable diagnosis, but it depends on lab-bound machines.
Blood tests, on the other hand, are comparatively easy to use; they can be performed at a doctor’s office or pharmacy, or even at home. But generally, the point isn’t to give a diagnosis. The tests work by measuring the level of antibodies in a sample of blood serum (hence their other name, serological tests). That means they’re only useful towards the end of a disease’s course, after the body has started putting up a real fight, and after a person has recovered. The sensitivity of a particular test depends on what kinds of antibodies that test is looking for. Because of that lag, and because no Covid-19-specific serological tests have been fully vetted yet, the FDA’s latest guidance is that they shouldn’t be relied upon for diagnoses.

But in epidemiology circles, those tests are a sought-after tool for understanding the scope of the disease. Since February—which was either three weeks or a lifetime ago—epidemiologists have been trying to get the full scope of the number of infections here in the US. Mostly, that’s meant designing mathematical models. Flawed models, as Andrew Lover, an epidemiologist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, readily admits. “We were breaking all kinds of rules,” he says of the early efforts. But the need was urgent. So researchers made do with limited data on the virus’s transmission rate in places like China and Singapore, and from just a few identified cases in the US. Lover, for example, extrapolated from a single case at the CPAC conference in late February. Others looked at cases caught after travel abroad, at deviations from the expected death rate, or at the genetic variation of viral samples.
By early March, these various research groups were posting their analyses online, along with heaping caveats of uncertainty. Then came a surprise, given their wildly different approaches. While each model had produced different figures, their conclusions were roughly the same: The actual number of people infected was likely tens of thousands more than the meagre testing results so far had suggested.

Those early models were a good start and can be credited with awakening local officials to the problems already at our doorstep. But as the disease has continued to spread and a patchwork of local “stay at home” rules begins to bend the course of the disease, projecting who has the disease and where the hot spots are has become more difficult for models to capture. Instead, you need boots-on-the-ground surveillance. In other words, to fill the gap created by a lack of diagnostic tests, you need more testing—but of a different sort. This time you have to know how many total people have already fought the bug, and how recently they’ve fought it.
“Of all the data out there, if there was a good serological assay that was very specific about individuating recent cases, that would be the best data we could have,” says Alex Perkins, an epidemiologist at the University of Notre Dame. The key, he says, is drawing blood from a representative sample that would show the true scope of unobserved infections.

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Normally, to do that, serological testing might be done in the twilight of an outbreak, as a kind of epidemiological postmortem. Researchers might do a randomized survey, picking 1 percent of people in a particular area for testing, says Martin Hibberd, a professor of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Then they would gather samples and run them in big batches. After the 2009 H1N1 outbreak in Mexico, such testing allowed researchers to determine that the mortality was far lower than initially feared.

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But with the severity of the Covid-19 outbreak, researchers around the world are racing to get tests out there quickly. “We haven’t really rolled them out on a very large scale for any other disease,” Hibberd says. The first serological tests for Covid-19 were developed in China and Singapore—partly because both had cases early on, but also because both places were hit hard by SARS and continued to invest in understanding coronavirus-related diseases while funding dried up elsewhere. That gave the countries a head start in developing the tests, due to similarities in the antibodies the two coronaviruses cause our bodies to produce.
Another motivation to develop better blood tests is the potential to develop therapeutics from antibody-rich blood serum. Last week, researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine released the recipe for a serological test with just that purpose in mind; the research is already being used to develop potential therapies in New York State.
And in the thick of the outbreak, especially given the shortage of PCR tests, the right kinds of serological tests could also provide a crucial diagnostic backstop. Hospitals could take advantage of cheap, fast-response tests that can easily be done on site to check front-line health workers, aiming to keep as many of them in commission as possible. “It would allow you to be cleared and come back to work, presumably resistant to infection,” Hibberd says.

But it’s important to tread carefully. “There’s a lot of misunderstandings about what they’re useful for,” says Kristian Andersen, an evolutionary biologist at Scripps Research who has studied the genetic origins of SARS-CoV-2. “A lot of companies out there make it sound as if these can be used for diagnosis, which generally isn’t true.” That requires a test that’s sensitive to the right antibodies and is administered by people who can interpret it properly.
In the Netherlands, researchers are developing a more sensitive test that could be used for diagnoses (and potential therapies). The current test is good enough for an anonymized population study, Zaaijer says. But it isn’t accurate enough to be used to send Dutch health workers back into hospitals with presumed immunity.
In the meantime, some places have started doing this kind of surveillance testing with the existing PCR tests, on a limited scale. Public health officials in Washington on Monday launched the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network, which involves randomly selecting households and having the residents ship swabs to the lab by Amazon courier. Iceland’s officials plan to test all their citizens, eventually, though that project still has a long way to go. Most prominent is the city of Vo in Italy, where all 3,000 residents were tested. Those who tested positive were isolated, allowing the town’s leaders to constrain the viral spread, though they acknowledged this would be hard to do in a bigger city.
Serological testing could expand the scope of that testing and get it done faster. United Biomedical, a New York-based biotech company, decided to offer repeat tests to the roughly 7,000 people in San Miguel County, home to Telluride, Colorado, where the company’s cofounders live. The idea is to develop a model that can be exported elsewhere, cheaply.

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The test isn’t rapid-response yet—the company is flying samples to the company’s headquarters in New York, where they’re run in batches. But Sharon Grundy, the San Miguel County medical officer, says the turnaround is quick. To date, they’ve shipped 61 tests to labs for PCR analyses—43 of which are still pending. Since Friday, the county has blood-tested 645 people, including all of the county’s first responders. “Any information is better than no information,” Grundy says. “For weeks we’ve been wondering, ‘God, is it this Covid or is it not?’”
Given the test’s limits, the key is getting two data points for everyone, Grundy says. If the first test comes back positive, the county will let the patient know that it still isn’t certain whether they’ve cleared the virus or not and will ask them to isolate as a precaution. A second positive means “they can let their guard down a little,” Grundy says. Negatives are trickier to manage, since they may miss the disease early in its course, but that underlines the importance of everyone adhering to social distancing, she notes. The county will continue sending out swabs for PCR tests, too, for people who qualify under the CDC’s guidelines.
One challenge with distributing serological tests in the midst of a crisis is that they might be a little too easy to get into people’s hands. So easy, in fact, that at-home tests might allow patients to do the whole thing themselves. “That puts me off a bit. I’d worry people would say, ‘Ah, yes, I’m immune,’ and be done with it,” Hibberd says. “The leaflet in your test kit might say it’s lovely, but that may not be accurate.” In addition to inaccurate tests that prey on the worried well, he’s concerned about people interpreting the results incorrectly. He’d prefer to see the tests in the hands of hospital staff first, so that health care workers get tested, and then doctors and pharmacies.
Los Angeles startup Scanwell Health is among the companies with plans to do at-home testing, in its case through a partnership with telehealth service Lemonaid. Jack Jeng, Scanwell’s chief medical officer, says the test, made by Chinese biotech company Innovita, is the sole Covid-19 antibody test to be approved by China’s equivalent of the FDA. The current plan is to offer the test to those who meet the CDC’s testing guidelines, which he acknowledges comes with challenges. He says the company is working out how best to communicate the limits of the test, including guidance for people who receive a negative result, given the chance that they could be infected but have not yet developed an immune response.

A better use, eventually, might be to expand eligibility for the test to those hoping to determine past exposure. “We’ve gotten a lot of interest from people who think they had it a month ago,” he says. “People who want to go out and help, but want to know if they were exposed first.”
The company, which received its first batch of tests this week, is awaiting word on an emergency use authorization from the FDA to distribute them in-home. Jeng says that in the interim, Scanwell is hoping to get the tests out to hospitals, where they could be used to clear front-line workers. As the cases ramp up across the country, he says he’s had no shortage of people hoping to take them off his hands.

Researchers Push for Mass Blood Tests as a Covid-19 Strategy

While it might seem wasteful to test the seemingly healthy, tracking antibodies could show how widely the virus has spread—and who may now be immune.

www.wired.com

 

[playahaitian]

The Need Is Great, but Is It Safe to Donate Blood During the COVID-19 Outbreak?

Share on PinterestThe American Red Cross says the COVID-19 outbreak has drastically reduced blood donations needed for surgeries, transfusions, and transplants. Getty Images
The new coronavirus is testing healthcare systems worldwide where communities across the country are instilling restrictions on where people can go.
That includes limiting the size of gatherings. The latest guidance came Monday, Mar. 16, when President Donald Trump said they should be limited to 10 people or less in the United States.
That’s of particular concern to the American Red Cross, which regularly holds blood drives to keep up with the demand for blood, even absent of a global pandemic.
The Red Cross said Tuesday that 2,700 blood drives have been canceled across the country due to concerns over COVID-19. That has resulted in 86,000 fewer blood donations.
Officials at the nonprofit organization say about 36,000 units of red blood cells are needed every day in the United States — even when there isn’t a pandemic.
“As a nation, this is a time where we must take care of one another, including those most vulnerable among us in hospitals,” Gail McGovern, president and chief executive officer of the American Red Cross, said in a statement.
“One of the most important things people can do right now during this public health emergency is to give blood,” she continued. “If you are healthy and feeling well, please make an appointment to donate as soon as possible.”
Her request was echoed Thursday morning by U.S. Surgeon Jerome Adams who urged healthy, young individuals to donate blood.
Many of the concerns of donating involve gathering in groups at donation sites, whether they be workplaces, college campuses, or schools. Many already have been shuttered entirely.
But even without a pandemic, the world needs your blood.

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Blood needed during a pandemic

There’s nothing particularly special about the new coronavirus that requires extra blood donations, but there’s still a consistent need for the live-saving plasma.
Dr. Pampee Young, chief medical officer for the American Red Cross, told Healthline that cardiac surgeries, organ transplants, and platelet needs of people with cancer don’t stop because of a global emergency.
“We are very concerned with keeping up the levels we need on a day-to-day basis,” she said. “Those needs are not likely to change.”
One thing that may slow down is the number of car accidents that require a person to need a blood transfusion. With more people working from home and fewer going out socially, there’s naturally fewer cars on the road.
But the Red Cross still needs people to get in their cars and donate blood.
“The need for blood is constant,” Young said. “As the epidemic gets worse, we’re quickly losing our donors.”
Indeed, the Red Cross’ plea for healthy people to donate included a statement from Dr. Robertson Davenport, director of Transfusion Medicine at Michigan Medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
“I am looking at the refrigerator that contains only one day’s supply of blood for the hospital,” he said. “The hospital is full. There are patients who need blood and cannot wait.”



Older adults at risk

The dilemma over donating is particularly acute for adults over the age of 65Trusted Source, who have a higher risk of developing more severe problems if they contract COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC recommends that people at greater risk of contracting COVID-19 avoid places where there are crowds and stay home as much as possible if there’s a detected outbreak in their town.
Young said that makes it harder to get those people to donate during the outbreak, which further shortens their supply of available blood. But she knows not everyone can make that trip.
“We absolutely understand why people don’t want to come to a blood drive,” she said.


Safety measures implemented

In response to the virus, the Red Cross says it has instituted several safety precautions.
Those include checking the temperature of anyone who comes into a donation site — a precaution as fever is a keynote symptom of COVID-19.
Other measures include sanitizing workstations and tablets that donors can use to fill out questionnaires, practicing social distancing such as keeping people 6 feet or more apart, spacing out donation stations, and timing donors so they aren’t huddled into one room at the same time.
What it’s like to donate now

On Monday morning, I went onto the American Red Cross website and made an appointment for that afternoon at a donation site on the north side of Oakland in California’s Alameda County.
As I drove to my appointment — after waiting through the long lines at the grocery store — I saw a sign someone had put up on a highway overpass: “We’re all in this together.” A large red paper heart was at the end.
Before I even reached for the door handle (using my sleeve as a barrier), a sign told me all who enter must have their temperature checked. I was told those who have higher temperatures are then referred to available healthcare services.
But I was good at a chill 98.2 degrees, so I was led in to complete my registration.
I noticed staff wiping down surfaces and laptops that donors can use to answer questions that could affect their ability to donate.
I still decided to use my smartphone to answer those questions, just to be safe.
After I entered my answers, I was led back into a room for further testing. That included a direct, in-person question about whether I had recently been in Wuhan, China, the center of the outbreak. I have not.
After checking my temperature again, along with my pulse and heart rate, I was led back into the collection room.
There were about a dozen stations available, but only three were being used. It took about 20 minutes to get the needed blood into a bag, including a few tubes to test my blood for whether it could be used.
My blood won’t be tested for the new coronavirus, a process that’s limited at this point all across the country.
I did, however, get some Cheez-Its and Chips Ahoy! cookies, along with a juice box, as I waited 15 minutes after my donation.
About 10 hours later, Alameda County and five other Bay Area counties would issue orders for citizens to shelter-in-place, meaning people were encouraged to stay home for nonessential travel.
While it doesn’t specifically list blood donation as an acceptable reason to leave my house, trips to medical facilities are, as well as “businesses that supply other essential businesses with the support or supplies necessary to operate.”
I think it’s fair to say that blood is essential to a hospital’s business.

The Need Is Great, but Is It Safe to Donate Blood During the COVID-19 Outbreak?

Share on PinterestThe American Red Cross says the COVID-19 outbreak has drastically reduced blood donations needed for surgeries, transfusions, and transplants. Getty Images
The new coronavirus is testing healthcare systems worldwide where communities across the country are instilling restrictions on where people can go.
That includes limiting the size of gatherings. The latest guidance came Monday, Mar. 16, when President Donald Trump said they should be limited to 10 people or less in the United States.
That’s of particular concern to the American Red Cross, which regularly holds blood drives to keep up with the demand for blood, even absent of a global pandemic.
The Red Cross said Tuesday that 2,700 blood drives have been canceled across the country due to concerns over COVID-19. That has resulted in 86,000 fewer blood donations.
Officials at the nonprofit organization say about 36,000 units of red blood cells are needed every day in the United States — even when there isn’t a pandemic.
“As a nation, this is a time where we must take care of one another, including those most vulnerable among us in hospitals,” Gail McGovern, president and chief executive officer of the American Red Cross, said in a statement.
“One of the most important things people can do right now during this public health emergency is to give blood,” she continued. “If you are healthy and feeling well, please make an appointment to donate as soon as possible.”
Her request was echoed Thursday morning by U.S. Surgeon Jerome Adams who urged healthy, young individuals to donate blood.
Many of the concerns of donating involve gathering in groups at donation sites, whether they be workplaces, college campuses, or schools. Many already have been shuttered entirely.
But even without a pandemic, the world needs your blood.

CORONAVIRUS UPDATES
Stay on top of the COVID-19 outbreak
We'll email you once a day as our news team publishes new and updated information about the novel coronavirus, including case counts and treatment information.
Enter your email
SIGN UP NOW
Your privacy is important to us

Blood needed during a pandemic

There’s nothing particularly special about the new coronavirus that requires extra blood donations, but there’s still a consistent need for the live-saving plasma.
Dr. Pampee Young, chief medical officer for the American Red Cross, told Healthline that cardiac surgeries, organ transplants, and platelet needs of people with cancer don’t stop because of a global emergency.
“We are very concerned with keeping up the levels we need on a day-to-day basis,” she said. “Those needs are not likely to change.”
One thing that may slow down is the number of car accidents that require a person to need a blood transfusion. With more people working from home and fewer going out socially, there’s naturally fewer cars on the road.
But the Red Cross still needs people to get in their cars and donate blood.
“The need for blood is constant,” Young said. “As the epidemic gets worse, we’re quickly losing our donors.”
Indeed, the Red Cross’ plea for healthy people to donate included a statement from Dr. Robertson Davenport, director of Transfusion Medicine at Michigan Medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
“I am looking at the refrigerator that contains only one day’s supply of blood for the hospital,” he said. “The hospital is full. There are patients who need blood and cannot wait.”



Older adults at risk

The dilemma over donating is particularly acute for adults over the age of 65Trusted Source, who have a higher risk of developing more severe problems if they contract COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC recommends that people at greater risk of contracting COVID-19 avoid places where there are crowds and stay home as much as possible if there’s a detected outbreak in their town.
Young said that makes it harder to get those people to donate during the outbreak, which further shortens their supply of available blood. But she knows not everyone can make that trip.
“We absolutely understand why people don’t want to come to a blood drive,” she said.


Safety measures implemented

In response to the virus, the Red Cross says it has instituted several safety precautions.
Those include checking the temperature of anyone who comes into a donation site — a precaution as fever is a keynote symptom of COVID-19.
Other measures include sanitizing workstations and tablets that donors can use to fill out questionnaires, practicing social distancing such as keeping people 6 feet or more apart, spacing out donation stations, and timing donors so they aren’t huddled into one room at the same time.
What it’s like to donate now

On Monday morning, I went onto the American Red Cross website and made an appointment for that afternoon at a donation site on the north side of Oakland in California’s Alameda County.
As I drove to my appointment — after waiting through the long lines at the grocery store — I saw a sign someone had put up on a highway overpass: “We’re all in this together.” A large red paper heart was at the end.
Before I even reached for the door handle (using my sleeve as a barrier), a sign told me all who enter must have their temperature checked. I was told those who have higher temperatures are then referred to available healthcare services.
But I was good at a chill 98.2 degrees, so I was led in to complete my registration.
I noticed staff wiping down surfaces and laptops that donors can use to answer questions that could affect their ability to donate.
I still decided to use my smartphone to answer those questions, just to be safe.
After I entered my answers, I was led back into a room for further testing. That included a direct, in-person question about whether I had recently been in Wuhan, China, the center of the outbreak. I have not.
After checking my temperature again, along with my pulse and heart rate, I was led back into the collection room.
There were about a dozen stations available, but only three were being used. It took about 20 minutes to get the needed blood into a bag, including a few tubes to test my blood for whether it could be used.
My blood won’t be tested for the new coronavirus, a process that’s limited at this point all across the country.
I did, however, get some Cheez-Its and Chips Ahoy! cookies, along with a juice box, as I waited 15 minutes after my donation.
About 10 hours later, Alameda County and five other Bay Area counties would issue orders for citizens to shelter-in-place, meaning people were encouraged to stay home for nonessential travel.
While it doesn’t specifically list blood donation as an acceptable reason to leave my house, trips to medical facilities are, as well as “businesses that supply other essential businesses with the support or supplies necessary to operate.”
I think it’s fair to say that blood is essential to a hospital’s business.

 

[playahaitian]

Coronavirus: Why is NYC reporting surge in virus deaths?

New York is now reporting an additional 3,778 deaths presumed to be coronavirus-linked.

www.bbc.com