A Cherry Hill man with COVID-19 hopes for experimental plasma treatment

After a weekend of emotional media appearances, emails, and calls that reached all the way to Gov. Phil Murphy’s office, Amy Breslow of Cherry Hill said she had three pieces of good news Monday morning related to her husband, critically ill with COVID-19.

First, Brett Breslow, 50, a Cherry Hill High School East theater dad, a Cherry Hill Knights football coach, and a software engineer at Lockheed Martin, is “showing some small improvements” at Cooper University Hospital, Amy said. The second is that she and her daughter have tested negative for the coronavirus.

The third, she said, is that the Red Cross is open to accepting donations of plasma — the liquid component of blood — that could be used in an experimental treatment.

The relief agency is not doing so yet, but says it is “committed to assisting” with such an effort. And there is reason to think it could help patients with severe symptoms from the coronavirus, though physicians caution that careful study is needed.

» READ MORE: How a Pa. physician stopped a virus outbreak in 1934 — with blood

The general concept has been around for more than a century. The blood of people who have recovered from a viral illness contains antibodies: customized proteins used by the immune system to fight the infection. For diseases such as measles, antibody-laden plasma from recovered patients was sometimes administered to those who were still sick, though the practice fell out of favor with the advent of vaccines.

Now it is back as a possible treatment for the coronavirus. Chinese physicians tested it on a handful of patients, though it is not clear how much it helped. And a New York hospital was planning to infuse a patient last weekend, with special approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Breslow has been in critical condition at Cooper since March 20, and is on a ventilator and undergoing dialysis for kidney failure as a result of the virus, his wife said. Whether plasma treatment would be available for him remained unclear Monday, as Cooper would have to obtain the same kind of approval as the New York hospital. Officials at the South Jersey hospital have not announced plans to seek it.

Amy Breslow, a college adviser, dropped off her husband at Cooper and hasn’t been allowed to see him since, she said. She says he’s been sedated while hospitalized.

“He’s still critical and far from being out of the woods,” she said Monday. “I’m thrilled that none of us are sick. … We’ve been hearing about how contagious it is, and none of us are ill. It’s very strange. There’s so much they’re learning about the virus.”

Brett and Amy attended their daughter’s performances of Cherry Hill East’s Legally Blonde, held at Cherry Hill West the weekend of March 6. But Amy thinks it is possible it was a trip to New York City on March 10 to celebrate their oldest child’s birthday and see a performance of Company on Broadway that may have led to Brett’s illness. Brett rode the train up, Amy said.

But nobody knows for sure. “It could have been at the grocery store,” she said.

As for the plasma donations, Amy was devastated over the weekend that people were turned away at the Blood Bank of Delmarva in Newark, Del., which said they wouldn’t be able to transport the plasma across state lines.

After appearing on MSNBC — “I’m in panic mode,” Amy told an equally emotional Alex DeWitt— a flurry of communications ensued, including messages to elected officials across the state and officials at Cooper.

She said Gov. Murphy’s chief counsel, Matt Platkin, emailed them Saturday that “the governor wants this to happen.”

“I’m hoping we’re going to have an announcement with details of donation centers,” Amy said. “Not only for Brett. There are others at Cooper.”

In a statement, the Red Cross said it was exploring the issue, but cautioned that donors would need to be tested for proof that they are virus-free.

“The Red Cross is currently working closely with the FDA to develop a process to identify and qualify individuals who have recovered from the virus and have the necessary antibodies to participate in this effort. We recently established a new webpage, RedCrossBlood.org/plasma4covid, to help collect prospective donor information. The Red Cross will then follow up with prospective candidates to confirm eligibility and participation.”

In the Chinese study, published Friday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, five hospitalized COVID-19 patients showed signs of improvement after being treated with plasma. Three have been discharged from the hospital; the other two remain in stable condition. The patients also received a variety of other drugs; the study authors said the patients might have recovered due to those drugs rather than the plasma, or they might have gotten better on their own.

Should the Red Cross identify sites for donors, Amy Breslow said, volunteers are ready.

Despite testing negative, she said, her official quarantine period doesn’t end until Friday. She said her husband, a healthy, athletic person, and others like him who have gotten ill will make for valuable study subjects.

“It’s going to be a long road,” she said. “He’ll be on a ventilator for two or three weeks. They’re seeing a lot of men in their 40s and 50s. This is not something that’s just attacking the elderly.”

“It’s bad. He’s got a lot going on. When he wakes up, he’s going to have a lot of questions.”