Dr. Michael Joyner of the Mayo Clinic is leading a nationwide study on the use of blood plasma to treat patients with severe cases of coronavirus. In an article in NBC News, he paid tribute to the extraordinary response of the haredi community in organizing blood drives to donate plasma, telling the newspaper that "There's no way we'd be able to treat so many people without them."
Back in April, he appealed to community leaders to "do what you can," and within just 36 hours, Yehudah Kaszirer, director of the non-profit Bikur Cholim charity organization in Lakewood, New Jersey, provided him with around 1,000 vials of donated blood. Roughly 60% of the samples were found to contain antibodies, and together with subsequent samples from additional blood drives organized by other haredi communities across the country, they were used to treat almost 20,000 people.
Dr. Joyner said he was amazed at the speed of the community's response: “They had a high rate of infection, which was terrible, but they decided to do something about it,” he said. “And they used their social cohesion and organizational and logistical skills to make it happen.”