Actor Tom Hanks shared photos of the blood plasma he was donating for coronavirus vaccine research.
Hanks shared the photos Wednesday after publicly announcing his plans to donate the plasma earlier this week.
“Here’s last week’s bag of plasma. Such a bag!” Hanks wrote on social media. “After the paperwork, it’s as easy as taking a nap. Thanks @arimoin and UCLA. Hanx.” (RELATED: Tim Allen Reveals He Sent Words Of Advice To Tom Hanks During Coronavirus Diagnosis)
“We have not only been approached, we have said, ‘Do you want our blood? Can we give plasma?’ And, in fact, we will be giving it now to the places that hope to work on what I would like to call the Hank-ccine,” Hanks said during an episode of NPR’s podcast “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!”
“A lot of the questions [are] what do we do now? Is there something we can do? And, in fact, we just found out that we do carry the antibodies,” he added.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have encouraged people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 to donate blood plasma to be used for blood-related therapies, according to a press release shared on the organization’s website.
“Prior experience with respiratory viruses and limited data that have emerged from China suggest that convalescent plasma has the potential to lessen the severity or shorten the length of illness caused by COVID-19,” the press release stated.