New York City resident Sabri Ben-Achour, 39, began to feel ill on March 12 and experienced roughly 36 hours of intense symptoms: fever, aches, fatigue, cough and headache.
But by March 14, Ben-Achour felt back to normal, except for one thing: both his sense of smell and taste were gone.
“I couldn’t smell anything,” he said. “I could literally not smell s---.” He ordered from a local Indian restaurant: “I asked them to make it extra salty and extra spicy, and it tasted like water.”
By March 16, he was fairly certain he had contracted and recuperated from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. But like countless other New Yorkers who fell ill over the past six weeks, he heeded official advice not to take a test unless he was seriously ill.
Last week, however, he saw an advertisement for the Mount Sinai Health System’s convalescent plasma study — an effort to collect the antibody-rich plasma of people who recovered from COVID-19 and inject it into critically ill patients. He applied online right away.
After a Mount Sinai screener asked him a few intake questions about the medications he is taking, namely HIV prevention pill Truvada, and his prior symptoms, Ben-Achour made an appointment to come to the hospital, where he had his blood drawn on Saturday. On Monday, he received a phone call: He had indeed contracted and recovered from COVID-19, his blood had a “robust” level of antibodies and the Mount Sinai doctors wanted him to donate his blood as quickly as possible so his plasma could be extracted and used in an experimental infusion on critically ill COVID-19 patients.
He was given a Tuesday appointment at the New York Blood Center and received a text with instructions to eat food and drink water before showing up. But just a few hours before his appointment, he said he received a call from Mount Sinai saying, “Actually, you’re not going to be able to donate because you are on Truvada.”
Ben-Achour, who is gay and HIV-negative, daily takes a Truvada pill, also known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, to protect himself against HIV infection. PrEP users take an HIV test four times a year to verify that they are still HIV-negative, which is a prerequisite for a Truvada prescription.
Ben-Achour asked if he could stop taking Truvada for a month and then donate his antibody-rich plasma, but he was told no: In order to donate any blood byproducts, he would have to both stop taking Truvada and — as is the policy for all men who have sex with men — abstain from sex for 12 months.
“I would be more than happy to go off of Truvada for four weeks,” he said. “But obviously not for a year — that would be putting myself in danger.”
The New York Blood Center, which declined to take his blood, said it was following federal and industry guidelines.