Lav Agarwal, Joint Secretary in Health Ministry
The plasma therapy being employed in hospitals across the country to treat the symptoms of coronavirus might be producing encouraging results, but it is still in its experimental stages and hasn’t been approved by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The stern warning has been shot off by the Union Health Ministry, with the Joint Secretary Luv Agarwal reiterating at the government’s daily briefing on the coronavirus situation in the country that the virus has no approved curative therapy till now.
“Life-threatening complications could arise if it is not used well,” warned the health ministry official.
“The ICMR is in the middle of a study on the effectiveness of plasma therapy to cure coronavirus. Until the study is completed, we cannot be sure that the virus can be treated by the therapy,” said Agarwal, adding that even America’s nodal health agency Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was trying it out.
The comments by the government official came a day after Delhi treated its first coronavirus patient using the plasma therapy, essentially involving injecting the plasma of cured coronavirus patients into the sick ones, so that the antibodies generated in the recovered patients could fight the virus strain in persons with existing infection.
Hospitals, both private and government-run, in several other states have also started the use of the therapy in treating those having a coronavirus infection.
Over 23 per cent of Indians who previously exhibited coronavirus symptoms have been cured till date, Agarwal revealed at his briefing, as he noted that 684 people have managed to recover in the span of last 24 hours.
He said that 1,543 new infections have surfaced in the last 24 hours, which took the tally of infected people in the country to 29,435. More than 21,000 persons are under medical supervision, he said.
India has recorded 934 fatalities due to the virus, which Agarwal noted were 200 times lesser than the death rate of 20 countries which have reported coronavirus infections, when seen in the backdrop of the population in these countries.
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