Area front-line workers donate plasma after recovering from COVID-19

Two COVID-19 survivors donated plasma to Dayton’s COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma (CCP) program Tuesday. Both survivors are front-line health and public safety workers.

On April 6, before the launch of the public CCP program, Community Blood Center became the first blood center in Ohio to collect plasma from a recovered coronavirus patient. The antibodies in convalescent plasma can help critically ill patients fight the virus.

Steve Norris from Troy, an Oakwood police officer, firefighter and EMT, is the third CCP donor in the area. He said his symptoms began with a cough. He was tested at the University of Dayton Arena and was nearly recovered from COVID-19 by the time he learned he had tested positive.

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He was followed by Tipp City’s David Summers, a physician’s assistant at Upper Valley Medical Center and manager of the emergency department PA’s.

“It’s good to be able to do something with this,” said Norris. “We hear all about the negative aspects of COVID and there’s plenty of them. But those who have recovered might have something in their blood to help people who are really, really sick. No sense in waiting when there are people really sick and dying.”

Summers saw the impact of COVID-19 when Miami County suffered a cluster outbreak and several deaths at a nursing home. He then experienced it when he became infected.

“We had a lot of really sick patients early in March,” Summers said. “We were kind of the first to get hit. I was surrounded by it. I was one of the first people to get tested at UD.”

He isolated himself in his basement, waiting for his test result, and trying to avoid infecting his wife, their eight-year old daughter and eight-month old son.

“I didn’t want to get anyone else sick,” Summers said. “I just lived in the basement for two weeks. I couldn’t walk across the room to go the bathroom without being short of breath.”

Summers avoided going to the ER because he didn’t want to endanger his colleagues. He recovered at home, returned to work April 6, and was encouraged to donate CCP. His plasma donation Tuesday was his first ever blood donation.

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Community Blood Center’s public program launched on April 10 in a joint announcement with Premier Health, the first health system in the nation to enroll a recovered COVID-19 patient in this experimental therapeutic treatment using protocols established by the Mayo Clinic.

Community Blood Center is asking for blood donations, as many blood drives have been cancelled due to social distancing practices.

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