The Centre has dropped plasma therapy from the Covid treatment protocol. Covid National Task Force yesterday released new clinical guidelines for the management of mild, moderate and severe Covid cases. Plasma therapy does not find a mention under the new guidelines. The decision came on the basis of recommendations of experts from AIIMS, ICMR-COVID-19 National Task Force, and Joint Monitoring Group of Union Health Ministry.
Members of the ICMR-National Task Force for COVID-19 met on Friday to deliberate upon the effectiveness of plasma therapy which gained momentum last year just during the onset of the pandemic. However, in the recent meeting, all members of the task force were in favour of removing the use of convalescent plasma from the Clinical Guidance for Management of Adult COVID-19 patients citing its ineffectiveness and inappropriate use in several cases. Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has said that they will issue an advisory on the matter soon.
The plasma therapy, which includes transfusion of COVID-19 antibodies from the blood of a recovered patient to the one being treated, has not been found effective in reducing the progression to severe disease nor has a decrease in the fatality rate been observed. The development comes just days after a group of medical practitioners wrote Principal Scientific Advisor K Vijay Raghavan cautioning against the ‘irrational and non-scientific use’ of convalescent plasma for COVID-19.
