Florida Coronavirus Patient Out Of Coma, Ventilator After Receiving Blood From Recovered Plasma Donor

Convalescent plasma, one among a number of emergency therapies being used to cure patients critically ill from COVID-19, saved another American life on Easter Sunday.

Michael Kevin Rathel of Florida emerged alive and well from a medically induced coma, days after receiving plasma donated by someone who had recovered from the disease. Rathel was taken off a ventilator a few days later and was breathing on his own, according to Fox 35.

"We are in a very different place than we were 24 hours ago," said Rathel's his wife, Stacie. "He was even cracking jokes with the nurses. So I thought, OK yeah, he’s back."

Her husband was placed into a medically induced coma April 4 by doctors at Orlando Health, a private hospital in Orlando, Florida, and received plasma therapy four days later. He was earlier connected to a ventilator and placed into a coma to save his life after his condition deteriorated.

“The (plasma) donor had the proper blood type to allow his plasma to be given to Kevin," said Dr. George Ralls, vice president of quality and clinical transformation for Orlando Health. "Things lined up the way we could have hoped for."

On March 24, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the plasma treatment. FDA defined convalescent plasma as the liquid part of blood collected from patients was have recovered from SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The FDA pointed out patients developed antibodies, which were proteins in the blood that might help fight the infection by the virus. It said convalescent plasma was being investigated for the treatment of COVID-19 "because there is no approved treatment for this disease and there is some information that suggests it might help some patients recover from COVID-19."

FDA was encouraging patients who have recovered from COVID-19 to donate their plasma to help others. It said these antibodies provided one way for a person's immune system to fight the virus when he or she was sick, so the plasma may be able to be used to help others fight off the disease.

A single COVID-19 survivor can provide enough plasma to treat up to three people. After the FDA announcement about convalescent plasma, New York state Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state, which remained the hardest hit in the U.S. by COVID-19, will use convalescent plasma as an immediate stopgap measure to treat infected people, especially the more serious.

"There have been tests that show when a person is injected with the antibodies, that then stimulates and promotes their immune system against that disease," said Cuomo. "It's only a trial. It's a trial for people who are in serious condition, but the New York State Department of Health has been working on this with some of New York's best health care agencies, and we think it shows promise, and we're going to be starting that this week."

As of Thursday, New York state had more than 226,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases and over 16,000 deaths. Cuomo has since made the welcome announcement that the number of hospitalization in the state was flattening out. The number of deaths kept rising, however.