After evaluating positive for COVID-19, Diana Berrent developed Survivor Corps, a grassroots clearinghouse for COVID-19 survivors interested in contributing blood plasma to companies establishing therapies that might fight the disease.
Diana Berrent/Survivor Corps.
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Diana Berrent/Survivor Corps.
After evaluating positive for COVID-19, Diana Berrent established Survivor Corps, a grassroots clearinghouse for COVID-19 survivors interested in contributing blood plasma to companies developing therapies that might fight the illness.
Diana Berrent/Survivor Corps.
Pals and associates, aware of her diagnosis, passed along a pushing demand from New York’s Mount Sinai Health System, one of the first centers to seek plasma, a blood element, to be used in a therapy that may battle the lethal disease.
” When I saw that e-mail going around, I saw what was going to happen in the landscape,” said Berrent, a photographer and mom of 2 who lives on Long Island.
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In Minnesota, a program coordinated by the Mayo Clinic has actually collected plasma from more than 12,000 COVID survivors for transfusion into more than 7,000 seriously ill patients, the outcome of a massive public appeal led by government leaders and nonprofit groups such as the Red Cross.
Meanwhile, for-profit business that generally pay $50 per contribution of plasma used in other lifesaving treatments are marketing strongly– and significantly bumping up their rates for COVID donors.
In Utah, John and Melanie Haering, who contracted COVID-19 aboard the ill-fated Diamond Princess cruise ship, received gift cards worth $800 after making two contributions apiece at a Takeda Pharmaceuticals’ BioLife Plasma Provider.
Melanie and John Haering contracted COVID-19 on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. BioLife, a paid plasma collection site, gave them present cards amounting to $800 for donations of their blood plasma.
John and Melanie Haering.
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John and Melanie Haering.
Melanie and John Haering contracted COVID-19 on the Diamond Princess cruise ship. BioLife, a paid plasma collection site, gave them present cards totaling $800 for contributions of their blood plasma.
John and Melanie Haering.
” If we could assist any person, we ‘d go every day,” said John Haering, 63, a retired railway supervisor who invested two weeks in a hospital in Japan after evaluating positive for the virus.
Donors such as Berrent and the Haerings are required to provide the structure blocks of potentially lifesaving treatments.
And there’s the possibility of a third treatment, monoclonal antibody therapy, which would utilize antibody-producing cells from high-antibody donors to develop lab-produced particles to battle the disease.
