Website facilitates plasma donations for COVID-19 patients

MANILA, Philippines — A new website has been launched as an online registry for donations of plasma from patients who have recovered from the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

Survivors of COVID-19 who wish to donate plasma may register at the plasmangpagasa.com website, which has teamed up with four hospitals so far—the Philippine General Hospital, Lung Center of the Philippines and the St. Luke’s Medical Center in Taguig and in Quezon City.

The website, which went online on Thursday, describes itself as “a secure, one-stop COVID-19 survivor registration system.” So far, one donor has registered on the site.

The site — plasmangpagasa.com — also identified its partner hospitals as the ones “with the capacity to facilitate plasma transfusion.”

ONLINE REGISTRY Screengrab of plasmangpagasa.com website

Antibodies

There is no cure yet for COVID-19, but donations of plasma from recovered patients are sought after, as this component of blood contains antibodies that are deemed vital for the treatment of COVID-19 and other diseases.

The Food and Drug Administration of the United States, for example, has a “Donate COVID-19 Plasma” link on its website.

Those who wish to register at plasmangpagasa.com must have prior diagnosis of COVID-19, as documented by a laboratory test, and must have fully recovered for at least two weeks.

The website has a “Register” box that directs the donor to an online form to fill in his or her contact, medical and other information.

A tick box in the form has a list of the website’s partner hospitals. The donor is asked to choose which hospital he wants to give to.

The website was launched by the partnership of Bacolod City-based web developer Talking Myna and the office of Sen. Sonny Angara, himself a recovered COVID-19 patient.

In a statement, the senator said “There are a lot of inspiring cases of people who were critically ill but were able to recover after undergoing convalescent plasma therapy, alongside other treatments. Donating blood plasma is the least that I could do to hopefully save someone.”

Angara has twice donated plasma. Sen. Juan Miguel Zubiri, another senator who contracted and recovered from COVID-19, also donated plasma, according to the website.

The Department of Health (DOH) recorded on Saturday an additional 1,494 COVID-19 cases, pushing the national tally to 41,830.

Of the new cases, 403 tested positive in the last three days, as reported by 60 out of the 73 accredited laboratories. Of these, 180 are from Metro Manila and 90 are from Central Visayas.

The remainder of the new cases, or 1,091, are patients who tested positive four days ago or earlier. Nearly half of these cases, or 499, are from Metro Manila, while 146 are from Central Visayas.

There are now a total of 11,453 patients who have recovered from COVID-19, with the recovery of 380 more patients.

However, the death toll increased to 1,290 as 10 patients succumbed to the severe respiratory disease. Of the new fatalities, eight died in June.

New system

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the DOH will introduce a new system of reporting COVID-19 cases next week.

Instead of classifying cases into fresh and late, the DOH would come out with an epidemiologic graph that will plot the additional cases based on the onset of illness in a patient.

“This is to help our countrymen see which of the new cases were recorded within the past three days based on onset of illness so we’d know the true picture of our daily cases,” Vergeire said.

In late May, the DOH classified its daily cases into fresh and late, as the agency shifted to an automated system to validate new cases faster.

—With a report from Jovic Yee