Salon: How 68,000 COVID-19 survivors created a world-class patient resource group in just four months. “Diana Berrent was one of the first people in her hometown of Port Washington, New York, to get COVID-19. Back then, in early March 2020, only immunocompromised and seniors were believed to be high-risk; hence, as a 46-year-old yoga practitioner and runner, Berrent was ‘shocked’ when she woke up with a 103-degree fever and respiratory infection — symptoms that strongly suggested she had coronavirus, which was later confirmed by a test…. Survivor Corps was created on March 24; as of July 10, it has over 68,000 members. Berrent said she started the group as a way to mobilize volunteers to donate convalescent plasma to those who would be later fighting COVID-19, or support scientific medical and academic research that they qualified for in order to help find a cure. “It was a way of gathering all these people who are currently sick, but who were going to be survivors pretty soon,” Berrent said. Once cases started to surge in New York, the Facebook group took off almost overnight. “As soon as April hit and New York got slammed our membership skyrocketed,” she said. “We now have a volunteer staff, a couple of dozen volunteers who work tirelessly to make sure that if you make a statement of health or medical facts and it’s not accompanied by a verified source, it gets taken down.”…