Blood from people who recover from coronavirus could provide a treatment,” reported the Washington Post on March 27, just a couple weeks after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic.
Just over a week later, the Washington Post reported again that while there was no vaccine yet for COVID-19, “we do have one potentially promising treatment to help people infected with the coronavirus: infusions of antibody-rich plasma from other patients who have had the disease and recovered.”
A couple months later, the Washington Post again touted the potential of blood plasma, also called convalescent plasma, in treating the virus. “A large study of 20,000 hospitalized covid-19 patients who received transfusions of blood plasma from people who recovered found the treatment was safe and suggests giving it to people early in the disease may be beneficial,” they reported June 18, 2020, in an article headlined, “Blood plasma from people who recovered is a safe covid-19 treatment, study says.”
Earlier this month, four former FDA commissioners wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing that “blood plasma might be the COVID-19 treatment we need.”
Flash forward Trump’s announcement that a breakthrough treatment for the coronavirus, convalescent plasma, had been given emergency approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). According to FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, plasma treatments reduce mortality of COVID-19 by 35 percent, but, suddenly, the Washington Post isn’t very impressed by blood plasma as a COVID-19 treatment anymore.
Wait @washingtonpost what happened here? pic.twitter.com/TUgTVOSypV
— Michael R. Caputo (@SpoxHHS) August 24, 2020
“Scientists express doubts about coronavirus treatment touted as breakthrough by Trump” reads the headline on their live updates page Monday afternoon.
The Food and Drug Administration’s decision to give emergency authorization for convalescent plasma as a treatment for novel coronavirus patients — touted as a historic breakthrough by President Trump on Sunday — is raising doubts among some experts who say the therapy hasn’t been adequately tested.
“The urgency of the crisis has elided with a false sense we should skip over rigorous studies of interventions because we don’t have enough time,” Peter Bach, director of Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Center for Health Policy and Outcomes, told The Washington Post. – READ MORE
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