Phil Valentine, the conservative Nashville talk show host fighting for his life against COVID-19, needs to be on an ECMO machine, similar to a heart-lung by-pass device used in open-heart surgery, his brother wrote on Facebook Friday afternoon. “Phil made it through the nite,” Mark Valentine wrote. He said that efforts to move his brother by helicopter to a hospital equipped with a ECMO machine were underway. “The protocol requires he be able to be on his back for several hours which I didn’t think he could do…but he did! We’re checking bed availability now and if he is a candidate for transport. It ain’t over.”

Last week, family members said that Valentine, who had spread COVID misinformation and mocked vaccines on his radio show, regretted not being a vaccine advocate and was battling COVID pneumonia, but he had not been placed on a ventilator. That decision was revised earlier this week when Valentine’s already severe condition continued to deteriorate.