MDA To Provide Plasma From Recovered COVID-19 Patients To Treat Sick Patients

JERUSALEM (VINnews) —Israel’s Magen David Adom (MDA) first aid organization aims to treat severely ill coronavirus patients with a new ‘passive vaccine’ taken from donated plasma of patients who have already recovered from the virus, according to a Jerusalem Post report. The treatment assumes that those who have recovered from the disease have developed special antivirus proteins or antibodies in their plasma, which could therefore help sick patients cope with it.

“When people are exposed to any disease, they develop antibodies,” Magen David Adom deputy director-general of blood services Prof. Eilat Shinar, told the Jerusalem Post.

Passive immunization is when you get those preformed antibodies. An active vaccine, in contrast, is when you are injected with a dead or weakened version of a virus that tricks your immune system into thinking that you’ve had the disease and your immune system creates antibodies to protect you.

In the first phase, plasma will be frozen and then delivered to hospitals across the country for patients to be treated by transfusion, Shinar said. In the second phase, the goal is to collect enough plasma to prepare antibody (immunoglobulin) concentrate with which patients will be treated later.

Shinar said the Israeli Health Ministry is currently in discussion with two companies that can create the immunoglobulin and is writing a protocol for who can receive the treatment.
MDA has been collecting plasma for more than 30 years; thousands of volunteers donate blood this way every day. Plasma with antibodies was used to treat patients with SARS during the outbreak in 2002. In addition, Israel offered a similar treatment to patients with West Nile Fever. Shinar added that a similar protocol was approved for use by the American FDA this week.

Earlier this week, The Journal of the American Medical Association published an article about plasma being used to treat five COVID-19 patients in China, which said that it “very much helped in their recovery,” Shinar said.

Before being able to donate plasma, a patient must wait 14 days from the time he or she was confirmed negative for coronavirus via two separate swab tests – hence the reason the first plasma was donated only on April 1. Shinar said that there should be another batch of donors available after Passover – those who were infected over the Purim holiday.

MDA will invite the potential donors to its Pheresis Unit at MDA’s Blood Services Center at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer. Shinar said that if there are enough donors from a particular city, however, MDA could set up a center there. Plasma can be given as much as twice a month, as opposed to blood which can only be donated every three months.

MDA director-general Eli Bin said that his organization is at the forefront of the fight against the coronavirus in Israel, and with this new treatment and others being tested in Israel and around the world, “we all hope that together we will overcome this challenge.”