“Until this therapy is properly approved and its effectiveness is proven, any claims made about the therapy are inappropriate,” Agarwal added.
New Delhi| In a daily briefing of Union Health Ministry on Covid-19 on Tuesday, the health ministry clarified that the convalescent plasma therapy is only allowed for research and trial purposes and should not be taken as approved therapy to treat Covid-19 patients.
Convalescent plasma therapy implies taking plasma from the body of a patient who had tested positive for Covid-19 earlier and then recovered fully from the disease. The plasma of the recovered patient is used on a critically ill patient in the hope that antibodies from the plasma of recovered patients would help the critical patient fight the virus and recover from it.
Lav Agarwal, the Joint Secretary to Health Ministry, said, “There have been many talks and discussions about the convalescent plasma therapy lately.”
“In this regard, let me clarify that ICMR has already stated very clearly that currently there are no approved therapies for Covid-19 treatment including plasma therapy. I would like to bring it to your notice that not only in our country but across the world, there are no approved therapies for Covid-19 treatment,” Agarwal said.
Many states had sought permission from ICMR and central governemnt to conduct the trials of plasma therapy on critically ill patients. One such patient from Delhi who was subjected to plasma therapy has recovered. Many had high hopes from the therapy after the recovery of the patient.
” Though plasma therapy has experimented lately, however, there’s no evidence to support it as a treatment. It is still at an experimental stage. USFDA has also seen it as an experimental therapy,” Lav Agarwal said rejecting the use of the therapy as treatment.
He further added, “ICMR has launched a national study to learn about the efficacy of this therapy. So it’s very necessary to clarify that until ICMR concludes its study and we have proper scientific proofs available, till then we conduct this therapy only for research or trial purposes. In fact, if we don’t use plasma therapy in a proper way, there can be life-threatening complications due to it.”
“Until this therapy is properly approved and its effectiveness is proven, any claims made about the therapy are inappropriate,” Agarwal added.
Warning about the usage of the plasma therapy for other reasons than research and trial purposes, Lav Agarwal said, “Any use of ICMR study like this in any place is illegal. In addition, there’s a threat to the life of the patient. ICMR has already issued detailed guidelines in this matter.”
Informing about the cases of Covid-19 crossing 29,000 on Tuesday, the health ministry also gave a brief comparison of its performance compared to the other countries.
“If you take 20 most affected countries due to Covid-19 across the world according to WHO and if you compare the total population of all these countries together with the population of India, it is almost the same. But if you compare the Covid-19 cases across all these countries together with cases in India, India has a 1 to 84 ratio of Covid-19 cases with these countries. If you look at the death toll due to Covid-19 and compare it to that in India, the ratio is 1 to 200,” Lav Agarwal said.
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