Military Tricare accidentally told 600,000+ people they’ve had coronavirus

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/07/military-tricare-accidentally-told-600000-people-theyve-had-coronavirus/


Military Tricare accidentally told 600,000+ people they’ve had coronavirus

Tricare, the insurer for the U.S. military’s health care systems, accidentally implied that more than 600,000 of its beneficiaries had coronavirus when it sent out a recent email requesting blood plasma donations from COVID-19 survivors.
Military.com reported the erroneous Tricare email, which went out to recipients of the healthcare system in 31 U.S. states in Tricare’s East Region. The email appeared as a call from Humana Military for recipients who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 to donate their blood plasma, also known as convalescent plasma, which researchers believe may be used to help treat future coronavirus patients.

“As a survivor of COVID-19, it’s safe to donate whole blood or blood plasma, and your donation could help other COVID-19 patients. Your plasma likely has antibodies (or proteins) present that might help fight the coronavirus infection. Currently, there is no cure for COVID-19. However, there is information that suggests plasma from COVID-19 survivors, like you, might help some patients recover more quickly from COVID-19,” said the email from Humana Military, which manages Tricare for much of the East Region.


The email reportedly went out to more than 600,000 people in the Tricare East Region. To date, around 31,000 people across the Department of Defense, including service members, family members, civilian employees and contractors have diagnosed with the coronavirus. Tricare’s website indicates the health insurance is only available to uniformed service members and their families, survivors, former spouses, Medal of Honor recipients and their families, and others registered with the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System (DEERS).
Humana admitted to the mistake hours after the erroneous email went out.
“In an attempt to educate beneficiaries who live close to convalescent plasma donation centers about collection opportunities, you received an email incorrectly suggesting you were a COVID-19 survivor. You have not been identified as a COVID-19 survivor and we apologize for the error and any confusion it may have caused,” Humana wrote.

Marvin Hill, Humana’s head of corporate communications apologized for the company’s error and said the email was intended to notify patients based on their proximity to a plasma donation facility, and not based “on any medical information or diagnosis.”
“As a part of an effort to educate military beneficiaries about convalescent plasma donation opportunities, Humana was asked to assist our partner, the Defense Health Agency. Language used in email messages to approximately 600k beneficiaries gave the impression that we were attempting to reach only people who had tested positive for COVID-19,” Hill told Military.com.
The Department of Defense announced in May an initiative to collect 8,000 units of convalescent plasma by Sept. 30. To date, the DOD has collected more than 4,600 units and has reportedly expanded its goal to 10,000 units.

I just HAD TO check to see if blood plasma contained donor dna, AND it does, according to Researchgate.  It is not a large amount, and much is fragmented, but is much more plentiful during and after a disease!

And I saw this charming fact on transfusions:
https://www.virology.ws/2017/03/23/the-viruses-in-your-blood/

If you have ever received a blood transfusion, along with the red blood cells, leukocytes, plasma and other components, you also were infused with a collection of viruses. A recent study of the blood virome of over 8,000 healthy individuals revealed 19 different DNA viruses in 42% of the subjects.
Viral DNA sequences were identified among the genome sequences of 8,240 individuals that were determined from blood. Of the 1 petabyte (1 million gigabytes) of sequence data that were generated, about 5% did not correspond to human DNA. Within this fraction, sequences of 94 different viruses were identified. Nineteen of these were human viruses. The method is not expected to reveal RNA viruses except retroviruses which are integrated as DNA copies in the host chromosomes.
The most common human viruses identified were herpesviruses, including cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, herpes simplex virus, and human herpesvirus 7 and 8, found in 14-20% of individuals. Anelloviruses, small viruses with a circular genome, were found in 9% of the samples. Other viruses found in less than 1% of the samples included papillomaviruses, parvoviruses, polyomavirus, adenovirus, human immunodeficiency virus and human T-lymphotropic virus (the latter two integrated into the host DNA).
The other 75 viruses are likely contaminants from laboratory reagents or from the environment. These include sequences from non-human retroviruses, four different giant DNA viruses, and a virus of bees, all found in less than 10 samples

Thanks Dove, very interesting info.