She remembers one man who was scared and couldn't rest: “I spent 45 minutes…sitting next to him, holding his hand so he felt safe enough to try to sleep for a little bit."

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine students will be rolling up their sleeves and pitching in to vaccinate patients against COVID-19.

The arrival last March of the COVID-19 pandemic in Tennessee presented challenges for the clinical research enterprise at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Prompt recruitment of patients newly diagnosed with COVID-19 into clinical trials was, and remains, a public health imperative with top-level backing from the federal government.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received renewal of a major federal grant to continue their collaboration to test and develop new treatments and vaccines against HIV/AIDS — and now COVID-19.

As of Feb. 1,065 outpatients have received antibody infusions since the clinic opened on Nov. 18. Clinic officials estimated that the infusions have prevented about 70 patients from developing severe COVID-19 illness requiring hospitalization or emergency department evaluation.

While the number of COVID-19 cases across the country is decreasing, pediatricians at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt are beginning to see a new post-surge trend: an increase in cases of multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C).

Treatment with convalescent plasma vastly improved the survival rate of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 who also had hematologic malignances that compromise the immune system, according to new data released by the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium (CCC19).