ROANOKE — No sooner had Ballad Health finished a news briefing in April to say it would begin treating seriously ill COVID-19 patients with antibodies from survivors’ plasma, when one of its executives raised his arm to donate.
Chris Miller, chief operating officer of Bristol Regional Hospital, said during a similar briefing last week that he knows how awful it is to be so sick. That’s why he has not only donated plasma three times, but he is telling his story so that others might do so as well.
Ballad Health is dealing with a surge of the virus in far Southwest Virginia and northeastern Tennessee that is filling more than 100 of its beds a day with seriously ill virus patients.
So far, 216 of its sickest patients have had convalescent plasma infusions.
Dr. Clay Runnels, chief physician executive, said in a phone interview Thursday that there isn’t one magic treatment. They are using a combination of steroids, high-flow oxygen and proning of patients (placing them on their stomachs), but doctors are seeing encouraging results with plasma.
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“Our critical care physicians are ordering it regularly, and they really think it’s helping the patient,” he said. “Again, that’s not research. That’s just individual experience with it.”
Ballad Health is part of the Mayo Clinic’s research project that is looking at the use of convalescent plasma. The plasma, drawn from people who have recovered from the virus and have antibodies in their blood, is given to people who are sick.
The therapy is not new and has been used to treat other viruses, including the 1918 Spanish flu.
Ballad does not yet have data on its effectiveness with the novel coronavirus and does not know if it has affected mortality rates.
“It’s not your classic controlled, randomized placebo study,” Runnels said. “We’re trying to get the best evidence we can.”
He said physicians wouldn’t keep ordering it for their patients if they didn’t think it was effective.
Dr. Evan Kulbacki, medical director of Marsh Regional Blood Center, said the procedure has few risks with less than 1% of people having an adverse reaction. Ballad patients so far haven’t had any, he said.
While Mayo has yet to publish on the effectiveness of the treatment, it has published two reports on the apparent safety in 20,000 patients.
Each donor can help two patients, and with the surge in cases in Ballad’s regions, there is a constant need for donations.
Kulbacki said they are sending out about 15 to 20 units a day.
“Our supply is just barely meeting our demand. At any time we could have a viral surge, and we’d be out,” he said.
There’s no such thing as too many donations.
“The greatest thing about convalescent plasma is you don’t have to use it in a week,” he said. “You can freeze it and use it up to a year. If we ended up with a stockpile of 10,000 of them, that’s not a bad thing. That’s a fantastic problem to have.”
Miller said he keeps donating because it’s an opportunity to use one of the worst times of his life to benefit others.
He can’t be sure exactly how he became infected by the virus, but the timing suggests he was exposed while on a relief mission in early March. Tornadoes had torn through middle Tennessee, killing 24 people.
The responders were packed in vans and churches. A week after returning home, he began coughing, then spiked a 102-degree fever. He went to a drive-through clinic for testing. By Day 8, he was feeling better, and on Day 10 he finally got the test results saying he was positive.
He stayed in isolation for 14 days, and then returned to work.
“I thought my adventures with the virus had passed. About eight days after my recovery date, — I’m a fairly active person and know my body well — my heart rate seemed off, and I was having odd sensations in my chest,” he said.
Miller said his heart and kidneys were damaged. Five months later, the cardiac symptoms haven’t fully resolved.
“I believe God gives the opportunity to use dark moments in our lives to benefit others, and it has a great purpose and that all things work for good,” he said. He found a purpose in donating plasma.
Runnell said they are seeing a similar response from patients who receive the plasma.
“Many of them have credited the plasma therapy with their recovery from severe disease,” he said. “We had a gentleman a few days ago who was discharged from the hospital and felt really strongly that he wanted to help other people because plasma therapy helped him, so he went directly from the hospital to Marsh and said, ‘I want to donate.’ ”
Kulbacki said Marsh can accept plasma from people who know they had the virus, and it can test for antibodies for others who don’t know whether they had COVID-19.
Anyone donating blood at Marsh can have a free antibody test.