An Act of Love and Desperation
The prayer beads hanging from Chloe Le’s rearview mirror trembled as she exited the I-15 freeway in Lake Elsinore, California, heading toward a drive-through COVID-19 testing center in the parking lot of Diamond Stadium. In better times, the stadium was used for minor-league baseball games and the city’s annual Halloween “Field of Screams.” Health-care workers stood before rows of white tents, covered from head to toe in plastic, as cars lined up.
Chloe turned off her YouTube Music playlist of Vietnamese tunes. She pressed her driver’s license against the glass of her car window, so a worker could jot down her name. Chloe knew the drill. She had been through this process twice already at this very site. Both of those COVID-19 tests had come back positive.
It was April 16. Chloe needed this third test to be negative. She believed that her husband’s life could depend on it.
Forty-three miles away, 32-year-old Ted Le, also diagnosed with COVID-19, lay intubated on a ventilator. He had been unconscious in the intensive-care unit at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, in Los Angeles County, since March 24. Prohibited from visiting his bedside, Chloe had not touched him in 24 days.
In early April, Chloe began reading news reports about doctors performing experimental treatments using plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients. The therapy hasn’t been proved to work, but survivors’ antibodies might help critically ill patients fight off the coronavirus. So across the country, hospitals and blood banks have been putting out calls for anyone who has recovered from COVID-19 to donate their plasma.
[Read: Why the coronavirus is so confusing]
Not enough plasma is yet available for all the patients who might need it. Positive COVID-19 test results can show up weeks after symptoms disappear, preventing donations. Survivors like Chloe who want to offer their plasma have had to wait or have been turned away because they did not meet eligibility requirements; others have been unable to donate because they have not yet built up enough antibodies. The controversial ban on gay men donating has prevented potential contributions as well.
The donor programs that Chloe had applied
