COVID-19: Ohio’s Role in Scientific Breakthroughs

Right now researchers from all over the world including here in the Miami Valley are looking into how to protect people from COVID-19.

Premier Health, Kettering Health Network, and Reid Health are all participating in the Mayo Clinic’s plasma study. Scientists are seeing if sick COVID-19 patients can heal from plasma separated from recovered patients’ blood.

The Community Blood Center was the state’s first site.

Premier Health was the first in the country to use the protocol to treat a COVID-19 positive patient.

KHN infectious disease specialist, Dr. Jeffrey Weinstein, said plasma is key because it has virus fighting proteins called antibodies.

“That pretty much happens after you’ve been exposed either to a vaccine or in this case to an infectious agent,” Dr. Weinstein said.

Antibodies are also part of the state’s search for a vaccine. Researchers at The Ohio State University are trying to figure out how to make them target COVID-19 proteins. This is so the immune system could stop the COVID-19 proteins from destroying cells.

“There the challenge is always making sure that you get enough of an immune response to that protein,” said Dr. Mike Oglesbee the director of the Infectious Diseases Institute at OSU.

Dr. Dawn Wooley is a virologist at Wright State University. She has spent her career studying viruses.

Dr. Wooley said the most optimistic estimate for a vaccine is one year from now.

She said researchers need to make sure a vaccine would not spread more infection or cause patients’ bodies to react against themselves.

“So we want to avoid those scenarios because that would make the whole COVID pandemic much worse than it already is,” Dr. Wooley said.

Dr. Wooley also said the medical community cannot count on vaccine development.

“We hope it will be sooner than later. But we have to prepare for the worst. And that would be that we don’t have a vaccine quickly or that we may never have a successful vaccine,” Dr. Wooley said.

She said in that case doctors need to rely on other treatment options.

© 2020 Cox Media Group