Prisma Health blood drive designed to help COVID-19 patients
Prisma Health is hosting a blood drive Friday that will go towards severe or critically-ill COVID-19 patients.
The blood drive is part of a national national treatment trial to test the effectiveness of blood plasma in severe or critically-ill COVID-19 patients. The Columbia hospital is specially seeking convalescent plasma donations from recovered COVID-19 patients. The donated blood plasma could be made into convalescent serum and given to approved patients within days, according to a news release from the hospital.
The blood drive will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Prisma Health Baptist Parkridge Hospital, located at 400 Palmetto Health Parkway in Columbia.
The overall goal of the trial is to determine if blood plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients can improve the chance of recovery for people severely-ill with the disease.
“The immune systems of recovered patients have created the antibodies needed to clear the virus from the body. These same antibodies can be collected from them in a process much like giving blood and then given to others who are still struggling with the disease,” said Prisma Health’s Jeffrey Edenfield, a medical director at the Institute for Translational Oncology Research.
Recovering COVID-19 patients must show their positive test results — either lab results or documentation form a health care provider.
As of Thursday, there have been 3,931 cases of the coronavirus and 109 deaths in South Carolina.
