Diana

Photograph by Morgana Wingard

PORT WASHINGTON, NEW YORK: PORT WASHINGTON, NEW YORK: I was one of the first people in my county to get a positive diagnosis which came as quite a shock since I am 45, I am healthy, I exercise, I’m super adventurous and I don’t get sick. When I got that diagnosis, I realized that if things went well I would be one of the first survivors. With that came a tremendous responsibility and also an opportunity. As I was recovering I began to see messages being passed around looking for survivors like chainmail. I realized immediately that the antibodies I was building, helped me fight this virus, could help save others if I were to donate my blood plasma. After seventeen days of isolation, I immediately headed to Columbia University to enlist as COVID-19 donor number one in its plasma study. As more survivors were looking for ways to help, I realized we had to create a more efficient system, a better platform, to connect the survivors with the researchers to better stem the tide of this pandemic. So, we launched Survivor Corps as an open group on Facebook where anyone could join. Within hours of launching, we had matches already being made between survivors and researchers. Now, we have over fifty thousand members from all over the world. Most recently, Survivor Corps has joined "The Fight is in Us" campaign, an unprecedented collaboration of world-leading medical and research institutions, national blood centers, life science and technology companies, philanthropic organizations all working together to support the rapid development of potential new therapies for COVID-19 patients.

You can join Survivor Corps at https://www.facebook.com/groups/COVID19survivorcorps/