As the new virus continues to spread, our population is in need of looking at new ways to curve against the epidemic. Here is a list of some new wave solutions for a cure:
Recovered Patient Plasma Distribution: Transfusing blood plasma from recovered patients into immediately diagnosed patients. The antibodies from the recovered patients will help the infected patients recover at a quicker speed than a vaccination may be able to. Over time as more patients become recovered around the world, their plasma samples can be sent to areas with desperate needs for more cures to mitigate the issue in the region.
A similar solution was made for Ebola back in 2014. The study was conducted on 84 Ebola patients found few benefits but at a low cost to implement. Blood therapy has also been used for animals. Blood therapy has been used to treat MERS patients, Junin patients and others but the conditions in which the tests were made were not as sanitary for public health officials to use.
Binding Antibody Molecules to the Coronavirus: Binding S protein (bacterial protein) of 2019-nCoV to counteract the virus. A similar solution was used to block the SARS virus from infecting cells for the disease. This type of therapy would be considered an ACE2 therapy to treat patients which can reversely effect pneumonia-like symptoms. For more scientific specifications on the solution, refer to John Hopkins University’s Robert Kruse’s research on COVID-19 therapy solutions.
Similar measures were taken in 1918 with the Spanish flu and appeared to be useful.
Antiviral Protocols: Korean doctors created a protocol for treatment using antivirals and chloroquine, drugs that are available to the public. It is not recommended that young, healthy and able people take this medication, but can be a valuable combination is other vaccines or medications are ineffective for the disease. Kudos to Tim Smith of Elsevier for the article that I found via Twitter.
Using Data, Maps and Graphs for Prediction: To implement these solutions wisely we need a database of recovered patients. The recovered patients then needed to be tested to find those with the most antibodies. We can use recovered patients from the same location to maximize overlap. Although the Chinese brought plasma from China to Italy, most of the dangers from blood transfusion such as passing on another disease are well understood and should be manageable with testing and knowledge of donors.
This calls for the need to test hundreds of thousands of patients in every region. So that we can find healthy people to combat the disease and help businesses in low-impact areas fight off a recession by going to those businesses. The more precise tests and mapping tools we have to combine insights into what regions of our country are hit hard or not hit at all can help us find quicker solutions and stop the burden of businesses from closing. Almost like a heat map of sorts for locating the contagion.
Our health care professionals and scientists are our front line superheroes, but it will be our data scientists who help us in the long run.