The world is under threat of a deadliest virus that has claimed over 147,500 lives in 210 countries across the world and with a rapidly increasing number of confirmed COVID-19 cases the tally has crossed 2,192,569 globally. Everyone is trying to halt the spread of Coronavirus and several studies and vaccine tests have already started in various countries of the world to curb the effect of the pandemic.
Amid the series of COVID-19 conspiracy and Hydroxychloroquine, there is a Convalescent Plasma Therapy that seems to treat people with the most severe symptoms of COVId-19. The US Food and Drug Administration after the US Health and Human Service Administration has approved usage of the therapy as experimental medical testing to treat critically ill Coronavirus patients in case no other treatment is found.
US Food and Drug Administration Head, Stephen Hahn said, “The Idea behind approving this therapy is to transfer immunity from a healthy person to a sick person through Convalescent Plasma.” The word plasma referred to antibodies (Plasma) collected from recovered COVID-19 patients, he added.
There are several questions in mind as to how it works, whom this procedure will help to recover, how many patients can be treated with one donor’s plasma, and many other questions are revolving in mind. Well, before the origin and trail status of plasma therapy, you better know the difference between mild and severe COVID-19 cases.
Difference between mild and severe Coronavirus cases
If your body is capable of developing immunity faster so you may have mild symptoms while people with lower immunity development may be critically ill and need this therapy.
What is Convalescent Plasma Therapy?
The basic concept of the plasma therapy was founded dates back more than a century when doctors were using similar treatment to treat people during the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918 and more recently the doctors used this to treat Ebola affected patients. This Convalescent Plasma Therapy includes transferring selected components from the blood of people who were COVID-19 infected and recovered recently into the people with mild COVID-19 symptoms or those who are at high risk to get affected. Here’s the procedure of this plasma therapy.
How Does This convalescent Plasma Therapy Work?
The procedure of donating plasma is almost similar to donating blood, but there is more to do and monitor in this process. See, the people fighting with the Coronavirus, their body produces antibodies to enable their immune system to fight against COVID-19. These blood components, including antibodies and proteins, are called B lymphocytes. Biologists separate these components that are secreted by immune cells from the plasma, or maybe from the liquid part of blood that prevents blood clots and improves immunity.
It is said that once an affected person recovers, then he doesn’t catch it again, however, a few COVID-19 recovered patients have detected the same symptoms in the USA. Well, doctors indulging in the studies of Convalescent Plasma Therapy said, COVID-19 affected who recovered, their body develops antibodies that stay in immunity systems through blood and fight the virus if it’s returned. In this process, doctors inject the same antibodies into the people with mild COVID-19 symptoms or those who are at high risk of getting affected.
According to the FDA, “There is no report yet if Convalescent Plasma Therapy will be effective in treating Coronavirus,” but the reports of successful testings and studies around the world are promising.
Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, the new hotspot of Coronavirus outbreak, is conducting trial reports confirming that they have treated 3 COVID-19 patients with Convalescent Plasma Therapy. In Kerala, India is the first state to have been approved to try this, as the situation is under control there.
