95.3 / 88.5 FM Grand Rapids and 95.3 FM Muskegon
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Spectrum Health: COVID 19 Plasma Therapy Is Helping

Spectrum Health Logo
Spectrum Health
/
spectrumhealth.org

In mid-April, Spectrum Health began treating COVID-19 patients with blood plasma from patients who have recovered from the disease, providing an additional treatment option to the most severely affected COVID-19 patients.  Doctors have a report on the progress they’ve made and a call for more donors.

“When we first started our goal was to prove the treatment is safe and we did that. Now our second step is to prove that the treatment is working.

Gordana Simeunovic is an infectious disease specialist at Spectrum Health and a professor at Michigan State University.   Back in April they started treating severe COVID-19 patients with blood plasma that came from patients who had recovered from the disease.  And she says so far they’re results are encouraging.  They’ve treated 63 patients with 50 patients recovering from the disease. 

“And this was in the majority of cases, salvage therapy. We were giving plasma trying to save their lives and in a high percentage of cases we did that, this is also encouraging.”

She said they have excellent teams treating COVID patients, adding Kent County has one of the lowest mortality rates, about 2.5 %, in the state.  Others are around 10-15 %.  With convalescent plasma being part of their care plan.  While things are going pretty well, Dr. Gordana says they are still in need of more donors. To be considered for donation, Dr. Gordana says you either have tested positive for COVID 19 or have antibodies, plus a few other factors.

But she emphasizes, for treatment to continue to be successful they need more donors.

“It is very important for everybody to consider donation. We are getting lax since numbers are going down. I wish this was the end, but it may not be.  We may have more patients and it would be good to have plasma stored for then.”
 

Dr. Gordana says the easiest way to get set up with becoming a donor is to talk to your primary physician and they can get you started.

Jennifer is an award winning broadcast news journalist with more than two decades of professional television news experience including the nation's fifth largest news market. She's worked as both news reporter and news anchor for television and radio in markets from Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo all the way to San Francisco, California.