What Do We Really Know About Plasma?
Prognosis: Misconception
Bloomberg
4.1 • 838 Ratings
🗓️ 24 August 2020
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
President Donald Trump expanded access to a coronavirus treatment that involves blood plasma donated by people who’ve recovered from Covid-19. But while convalescent plasma, as it’s known, is a promising therapy, researchers don’t yet fully understand how well it works. Michelle Fay Cortez explains what the announcement means, and the concerns that agencies like the FDA are letting pressure from the White House, rather than science, guide their decisions.
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| 0:40.8 | Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day 166 since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. |
| 0:49.2 | Today's main story, using the blood plasma of recovered COVID patients to treat very sick ones is a promising experimental tool in the fight against the disease. But what should we make of today's |
| 0:56.4 | decision by the White House to expand access to the treatment even before researchers fully understand |
| 1:04.0 | it? But first, here's what happened in virus news today. |
| 1:19.7 | After suffering one of Europe's earliest and fiercest outbreaks, Italy emerged as an unlikely role model for its handling of the pandemic. The country managed to reduce infections and |
| 1:26.5 | fatalities dramatically in June and July, after two |
| 1:30.4 | months of strict lockdown. But as cases flare in Europe, Italy's success may now be in jeopardy. |
| 1:39.3 | On Saturday, Italy recorded the most new cases since mid-May. |
| 1:46.1 | The intensity and duration of Italy's lockdown is widely seen as one of the reasons why cases continue to fall |
| 1:54.0 | after curbs started to be gradually lifted in early May. |
| 2:00.1 | Restrictions were maintained for a full six weeks after new infections peaked, |
| 2:05.4 | and schools never reopened, unlike in France or Germany. |
| 2:12.0 | Hong Kong has confirmed the first known case of a coronavirus reininfection. A man was infected with the virus this |
| 2:21.0 | month after recovering from an initial bout in April. Scientists say they found the second infection |
| 2:28.9 | in the 33-year-old who had no symptoms when he was screened at an airport after returning from Europe. |
| 2:37.3 | Researchers at the University of Hong Kong say they know it is a reinfection because they |
| 2:43.3 | used genomic sequence analysis to prove that he had been reinfected by two different strains. |
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