The NBA has seen players and other league personalities testing positive for COVID-19 and some of them have been declared clear of the lethal virus. In the continuing fight to beat the disease, league officials are calling on recovered patients to consider donating plasma, which could be used as a potential treatment.
The league, through the NBA Together, is throwing its full support on the National COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project that is soliciting donations, specifically from individuals who made a successful recovery from the killer bug.
The project, according to NBC Sports, "has brought together top medical specialists to determine if plasma donations could help in treating coronavirus."
From the report by Shams Charania of The Athletic, the NBA is appealing to "team individuals who have recovered to consider donating plasma."
To be clear, convalescent plasma is yet to be classified as a possible medical solution for the coronavirus pandemic but health authorities in the United States are studying to confirm if antibodies found on convalescent plasma can be used for COVID-19.
Clutch Points reported that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is investigating the possibility of convalescent plasma can be used and "effective against the infection."
"Use of convalescent plasma has been studied in outbreaks of other respiratory infections, including the 2009-2010 H1N1 influenza virus pandemic, 2003 SARS-CoV-1 epidemic, and the 2012 MERS-CoV epidemic. Although promising, convalescent plasma has not been shown to be effective in every disease studied," the agency was reported as saying.
At this stage of the ongoing research, the FDA said scientists have been led to mixed results, which indicated that to prove the effectiveness of using convalescent plasma against COVID-19, further researches and tests will be required.
"It is therefore important to determine through clinical trials, before routinely administering convalescent plasma to patients with COVID-19, that it is safe and effective to do so," said the FDA advisory.
Notably, plasma donations that would come from Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell, and Christian Wood would be highly anticipated as the three NBA players were the first confirmed coronavirus cases in the league. Recently, all have been cleared of the virus infection and samples from them should be useful to ascertain if the FDA's assumption will prove accurate.
According to Bleacher Report, apart from the names mentioned above, all known COVUD-19 infections in the NBA have been cleared as well. However, the league remains committed to doing its share in slowing down the infection and killing the virus altogether.
NBA players and other league figures have made significant financial contributions in the continuing battle to defeat the novel coronavirus, which health officials said has infected up to 630,000 people and killed thousands from around the world.
