RELATEDLY, Hiroko Fujii and Noriyuki Takada write in Nikkei Asia on November 24, 2020: “With antibody treatments seen as the best weapon against Covid-19, Japan and the country’s top drugmaker have turned to a type derived from the plasma of recovered patients, rather than the lab-made varieties used on U.S. President Donald Trump.
“An alliance of companies and health organizations, including Takeda Pharmaceutical is working on an immunoglobulin-based coronavirus treatment, and a Phase 3 clinical trial began in October across multiple countries. Results may become available before the end of the year… Immunoglobulins are naturally occurring antibodies taken from the plasma of recovered coronavirus patients.” We have scoured the Takeda website for those much-anticipated results; they seem to be as yet unavailable. We hope to see them soon.
Closer to home, St. Luke’s Medical Center’s President and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Arturo Dela Pena on June 25, 2020, announced via the center’s website their gratitude to Getz Healthcare Philippines for the latter’s donation of two Scinomed Plasma Collection Machines, state-of-the-art equipment used to collect donor plasma in 40 minutes rather than the then usual 1.2 to 1.5 hours. The machines can also collect double the amount of plasma than the regular. The website states further that “St. Luke’s Medical Center is one of the first hospitals in the country to conduct convalescent plasma therapy for Covid-19 patients.”
St. Luke’s is also one of only two hospitals in the country that are government-certified to collect convalescent plasma for use in treatment protocols. The other is Philippine General Hospital (PGH), currently conducting a year-long clinical study that began in April 2020, using convalescent plasma to treat Covid-19. Also, only the Philippine Blood Center and Philippine Red Cross-Port Area are the certified non-hospital-based convalescent plasma collection facilities in the country. These we learn from an August 8, 2020 press release from our Department of Health, found on their website itself. In truth, the said press release is actually a warning to all against the illegal trade of convalescent plasma of patients recovered from Covid-19.
However, our takeaway has to be that if both PGH and St Luke’s are involved in Covid-19 treatment protocols using convalescent plasma, as is an entire alliance including Takeda, then there is hope for plasma-based treatment therapy.
More hope for non-vaccine treatment comes from pharmaceutical giant Merck, which this column featured some time ago, as being highly vaccine-cautious. Merck has veered away from vaccine development to treat Covid-19 and, states Ben Fidler in biopharmadive.com on January 25, 2021, “will now focus on developing Covid-19 treatments, which are still desperately needed as initial vaccine rollout goes slower than many had hoped. The company has two prospective drugs in testing. One, an oral antiviral called molnupiravir and licensed from Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, is being studied for both hospital and outpatient treatment. The other, acquired through Merck’s buyout of OncoImmune, is meant to tamp down an overactive immune response in more severe Covid-19.”
And while vaccine mania abounds, many of us remain skeptical of a vaccine that will cure all, like some magic wand in a fairy tale. Pulse Asia polled 2.400 adult Filipinos in Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao from November 23 to December 2020. The survey result was that while 95 percent of the respondents were aware of vaccine developments, just 32 percent expressed willingness to be vaccinated. Of the rest, 47 percent were unwilling to be vaccinated, and 21 percent were undecided. Yours truly would be among the 47 percent unwilling.
Because as matters stand, all of the current vaccines being now used against Covid-19 are in trial stages, with the entire planet as a laboratory.