Two recovered coronavirus patients donate plasma at PGI Chandigarh

Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, May 9

Two recovered coronavirus patients donated their plasma at the PGI, Chandigarh, on Saturday. This comes after the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) approved the PGI to conduct trial plasma therapy on COVID-19 patients.

The two donors—Fiza Gupta and Arnav Gupta—donated their plasma to support critically sick Covid-19 patients. 

PGI Director Prof. Jagat Ram thanked the family for coming forward voluntarily for this noble cause. 

Recently, the PGI was selected as one of the national centers by the ICMR to conduct the trial of convalescent plasma therapy in patients with serious COVID-19 infection.

With this approval, serious sick COVID-19 positive patients admitted to Nehru Hospital Extension Block will be eligible to get this form of treatment. 

In this trial, antibodies from the blood of patients, who have recovered from COVID-19, are used to treat severely infected patients. 

However, the exact role of this therapy in the treatment of Covid-19 positive patients is still debatable and hence, the ICMR decided to conduct a multicentric study to clarify its role in these patients.

The collaborative departments for this trial are Departments of Internal Medicine, Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, Transfusion Medicine, Endocrinology, Virology and community Medicine. 

The team of doctors from the Department of Transfusion Medicine will start getting in touch with patients, who have recovered from COVID-19 infection and would explain the nature of the study.

The study is aimed at assessing the safety and efficacy of convalescent plasma to limit complications in Covid-19 patients.