The Western North Carolina VA Health Care System has partnered with the Mayo Clinic for a special treatment program to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.The program allows plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients to be donated, screened and used for treatment in current patients.
Health experts believe that people who recover from COVID-19 can do so, in part, because they have antibodies which can fight off the virus. Antibodies exist in plasma and plasma can be pulled from the blood.The program was successfully approved on May 5, after the Health Care System’s Research Office reviewed options for how the treatment could be provided at Charles George VA Medical Center.
WHO Pauses Trial of Hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 Patients Due to Safety Concerns
The World Health Organization has suspended testing the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 patients due to safety concerns, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday.Hydroxycholoroquine has been touted by Donald Trump and others as a possible treatment for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The U.S. President has said he was taking the drug to help prevent infection.
“The executive group has implemented a temporary pause of the hydroxychloroquine arm within the Solidarity trial while the safety data is reviewed by the data safety monitoring board,” Tedros told an online briefing.He said the other arms of the trial – a major international initiative to hold clinical tests of potential treatments for the virus – were continuing.
Long Island On Track To Reopen Wednesday
New York’s Mid-Hudson region has been cleared to reopen Tuesday, more than two months after a lawyer from New Rochelle spawned the state’s first virus cluster, one that would spread to Manhattan and New Jersey and prompt Gov. Andrew Cuomo to deploy the National Guard — the first containment move in what would be a series of shutdown orders over the next few weeks.
Long Island will enter Phase I Wednesday, Cuomo said, as he announced New York’s lowest daily virus death toll (73) since the pandemic hit the Empire State. Now it’s time to fully turn the page in the battle against the coronavirus, Cuomo said. He shifted his focus as of Memorial Day to a two-track plan — one track is to monitor regional reopenings. The other is to “supercharge” the reopenings, accelerating long-overdue infrastructure programs like rebuilding Penn Station while ridership is low and kick-starting the LaGuardia AirTrain project.