By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Kansas First District Congressman Dr. Roger Marshall is encouraged by the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for investigational convalescent plasma for the treatment of COVID-19 in hospitalized patients on Sunday.
"This is a treatment that actually we've been using for different diseases for decades in medicine," Marshall said Monday. "We had spoken to Vice President Pence about three weeks ago about this. It's a great thing. It's just one more example of what President Trump and his team is doing, in Trump time, at warp speed, getting new treatments for COVID-19."
Many Covid-19 patients have already received the treatment through the FDA’s expanded access program, prior to the emergency announcement. The supply is limited by the number of recovered patients who donate plasma.
"What we do is, we take antibodies from a person who has had the virus before," Marshall said. "We take those out of their body, we isolate them and then we multiply them. Then we can inject them back in mass numbers into a person who is sick."
Marshall believes there may be an additional use for the treatment.
"I'm also thinking we're going to be able to use this for people that are really high risk that are exposed," Marshall said. "Maybe you're in a nursing home and one person tests positive and the same nurse was taking care of these ten patients. Maybe we give all ten of those patients this antibody and it will protect them, maybe, for a month or two."
The agency has issued many EUAs during the course of the coronavirus pandemic, mostly for diagnostic tests but also for some drugs.