Air Force veteran Patrick Bright, 55, a police officer with the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, nearly died from COVID-19. Then he received a new treatment.
Bright was hospitalized at MedStar Southern Maryland Hospital on March 23. His health quickly deteriorated, and four days later he was flown to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.
He also contracted double pneumonia and was placed on a ventilator. Bright said the doctor told his wife, Pamela, that he was the sickest patient in the hospital and that he likely had no more than three days to live.
Then an experimental treatment was approved for use. On his fifth day on the ventilator, Bright received convalescent plasma from Dr. Lambros Stamatakis, a physician at both MedStar Georgetown University Hospital and MedStar Washington Hospital Center, himself a COVID-19 survivor.
A spokesperson at MedStar Georgetown said Bright was the first person in the District of Columbia to receive convalescent plasma.
”On the eighth day on the ventilator, things started looking up,” Bright said. ”My vitals and everything started improving.”
On May 15, after nine days on the ventilator and nearly two months after first being hospitalized, he was discharged and is now recovering at his home in Clinton, Maryland.
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