08 Apr UW Hospital to treat COVID-19 patients with survivor blood
Tiffany Pinckney, from the Harlem neighborhood of New York, became one of the nation’s first donors of “convalescent plasma.” ASSOCIATED PRESS
By early next week, proteins from the blood of people who have recovered from COVID-19 could be helping patients at UW Hospital fight their infections.
Using a technique more than a century old, doctors plan to transfuse antibodies from the plasma of people who fought off the new coronavirus into patients struggling with serious complications.
UW Hospital last week joined the National COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project, started about a month ago by Johns Hopkins University, Mayo Clinic and other institutions. On Friday, the Food and Drug Administration approved a clinical trial at Johns Hopkins, through which UW Hospital’s treatment program will operate, Hartman said.