Reports Say Trump Will Announce New COVID Plasma Treatment Today!

Here are more details from Bloomberg:

President Donald Trump will announce on Sunday that a new coronavirus treatment involving blood plasma donated by people who’ve recovered from the disease has received an emergency use authorization from U.S. regulators.

Trump will make the announcement at a press conference due to start at 5:30 p.m. in Washington, said two people familiar with the situation who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to clear for use with certain patients what’s known as convalescent plasma. The move would make it easier for patients to get the product, which Trump has touted even though its effectiveness hasn’t been proven.

Trump’s chief of staff earlier blamed federal bureaucrats for slowing the U.S. response to the virus pandemic, which has killed more than 175,000 Americans so far, ahead of what had been touted as a “therapeutic breakthrough.”

After Trump claimed Saturday that FDA employees were engineering delays to sabotage his re-election, Mark Meadows said the president’s Twitter comment reflected “frustration” with bureaucrats there.

“They want to do things the way they’ve always done it,” Meadows said on ABC’s “This Week.” “This president is about cutting red tape. That’s what the tweet was all about.”

Major Breakthrough

White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Saturday on Twitter that Trump would announce a “major therapeutic breakthrough” against Covid-19. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn and Health and Human Service Secretary Alex Azar will also attend, she said.

Meadows suggested part of the reason Trump tweeted about the FDA on Saturday is that he wants to make federal health agencies “feel the heat” to deliver results.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Meadows said “the announcement that’s coming today should have been made several weeks ago.”

“It was a fumble by a number of people in the federal government that should have done it differently, and having been personally involved with it, sometimes you have to make them feel the heat if they don’t see the light,” he said.

Of course many on the Left had negative views on the announcement:

CNN called it a "major theraputic breakthrough":

A White House briefing Sunday on a "major therapeutic breakthrough" is expected to be about an emergency use authorization for the use of convalescent plasma to treat Covid-19, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.

Last week, President Trump accused some health officials of playing politics regarding an EUA for convalescent plasma. When asked about the US Food and Drug Administration not having granted an EUA, Trump said the reason was political.

Today, one of the sources, who is close to the White House Coronavirus Task Force, says the FDA has reviewed additional data to inform its impending EUA decision. This official has not personally reviewed the data. They added the FDA is under no obligation to consult anyone outside the agency about its decision.

Convalescent plasma is created from the blood of people who have recovered from Covid-19, and it has shown some success in two other deadly coronaviruses: MERS and SARS. It has also been used to treat flu and Ebola.