Eloy de la Varga is 19 years old and is hyperimmune to covid-19. This young aerospace engineering student at the University of León caught the virus in September. A month in confinement with no symptoms and three positive PCR tests alerted his doctors, who decided to do a serological test in which they detected a higher than average level of antibodies against SARS CoV-2 and that made Eloy hyperimmune.
We meet him at the blood donor point of the José Aguado health center, where, for the second time in just under two months, he goes to donate plasma. «Thanks to the mother of a friend I found out that plasma from people with antibodies was being used to treat patients in ICUs and I decided to get in touch with the blood donors to find out, ”says the young man who, although he had never donated blood before, did not hesitate for a moment to lend his arm to help.
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The blood donor point in José Aguado has a machine to filter the plasma from the rest of the blood components. /
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Eloy’s story is, to say the least, curious: on August 24 he was confined to home for having been in contact with a positive covid. After testing positive in the PCR test, he had to spend another 21 days «locked in my room because I was up to three times positive until September 24 that I could already leave ».
Use of plasma with antibodies to treat covid-19
The donation process is simple. After filling in the usual form and passing the tests with the doctor to ensure that the patient is healthy, does not present abnormal levels of tension or iron deficiency, the donor goes to the room where the nurse connects him to the machine that performs the extraction and filtering.
Diana García, nurse, explains the procedure. «What we do is take the blood that is filling the tank, it is centrifuged and it goes down filling the plasma bag. We try get about 600 milliliters of plasma in a total of 3 or 4 cycles ”. A process that lasts between 30 and 40 minutes and what is called aféresis: the blood enters the machine that separates the plasma from the rest of the blood components that are returned to the donor.
It is Plasma from convalescent patients who have overcome the infection is used to treat patients with severe symptoms, and a single donor can help up to three patientsIt is a treatment option that has already been used successfully to treat other coronavirus outbreaks, as in 2003 with SARS and in 2012 with MERS, and which has already proven its effectiveness during this pandemic.
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Like Eloy, there are several people who have developed this hyperimmunity and who put their antibodies at the service of other patients to fight against the disease. «People are responding very well, have called us and have registered on the page to donate “, says Diana, who assures that per day they appoint an average of four plasma donors.
Eloy, who breaks a spear for young people “who are careful and respect the rules”, does not know how long he will continue to have antibodies, but he is clear that as long as he can help he will continue to do so. A altruistic and disinterested response that blood donors consider very positive and that is yet another example of the generosity of the people of León during the pandemic.
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