Estimates of actual and potential lives saved in the United States from the use of COVID-19 convalescent plasma

Quigly Dragotakes, Patrick W. Johnson, Matthew R. Buras, Rickey E. Carter, Michael J. Joyner, Evan Bloch, Kelly A. Gebo, Daniel F. Hanley, Jeffrey P. Henderson, Liise Anne Pirofski, Shmuel Shoham, Jonathon W. Senefeld, Aaron A.R. Tobian, Chad C. Wiggins, R. Scott Wright, Nigel S. Paneth, David J. Sullivan, Arturo Casadevall

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

In the Spring of 2020, the United States of America (USA) deployed COVID-19 convalescent plasma (CCP) to treat hospitalized patients. Over 500,000 patients were treated with CCP during the first year of the pandemic. In this study, we estimated the number of actual inpatient lives saved by CCP treatment in the United States of America based on CCP weekly use, weekly national mortality data, and CCP mortality reduction data from meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials and real-world data. We also estimate the potential number of lives saved if CCP had been deployed for 100% of hospitalized patients or used in 15 to 75% of outpatients. Depending on the assumptions modeled in stratified analyses, we estimated that CCP saved between 16,476 and 66,296 lives. The CCP ideal use might have saved as many as 234,869 lives and prevented 1,136,133 hospitalizations. CCP deployment was a successful strategy for ameliorating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA. This experience has important implications for convalescent plasma use in future infectious disease emergencies.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere2414957121
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume121
Issue number41
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 8 2024

Keywords

  • COVID-19
  • SARS-CoV-2
  • antibody
  • convalescent plasma
  • mortality

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