What is Convalescent Blood Plasma Therapy ?& Can it cure COVID-19?

The deadly coronavirus is spreading all over the world and this virus is causing the big threat to the Mankind and the whole world is trying to find out the solution that how to fight with the deadly coronavirus. So while the world awaits the vaccine, a cure . There is one treatment that made some hope to the world and that is the convalescent blood plasma therapy

So What is Plasma Therapy ?

Plasma therapy is actually take out many patients from the ventilator.  So Let’s tell you more  about Plasma Therapy.  Plasma is the largest  component in human blood and it contains water, salt, enzymes, antibodies and all type of nutrients.

So in this therapy the plasma from the blood of a person is first extracted and screened virus-neutralizing antibodies. Then it will be transferred into the patient, when the sick person receives a healthy plasma, the immune system will produce antibodies to identify the causes  of sickness or the cause of the virus . After that white blood cell fight with the virus and the body gets rid of the Virus. The body of the person who got recovered from Coronavirus disease will naturally make the antibodies to fight coronavirus.

Conditions of Plasma Therapy 

However there are few conditions under which the blood plasma therapy can be used from a recovered patient or a patient who is  asymptomatic for very very long time to a patient who is on ventilator and struggling with the corona virus disease 

Who Can Donate plasma to Cure COVID 19 Patient ?

1. The donor should tested negative for 14 days of corona virus
2. The swap test  must be negative 
3. The potential donor has to be declared as cured
4. The donor needs to be over 17 years age
5. The weight of donor must be  over 50 kilograms 
6. The donor needs to be fully  healthy ( physically and Mentally)

After this, the process of blood transfusion can start .There are  other challenges to use the convalescent blood plasma therapy and the main challenge is  there is huge difference in the number of patients who are  suffering from coronavirus to the number of patients who have recovered. 

In India, till may 1 2020, the number of patients who are suffering from coronavirus are 35,070 and on the other hand the number of patients  who are successfully cured are 9,276 .Now in this all 9,276 cannot be automatic donors because they might not qualify physically to actually be a donor

On the other hand who have recovered, might not want to donate plasma because this is a voluntary exercise like blood donation, if anybody don’t want to donate plasma, nobody can force you, so they need to come out on their own to donate plasma. so very few of them can actually donate and plasma from one person cannot be used on many patients.

Can Plasma therapy cure COVID-19 ?

And lastly, if you are thinking that the blood plasma therapy is magic bullet that can 100 % kill corona virus ? 

And the answer is “NOT 100% ” And the reason “its not a vaccine”

Yes, it is treatment but not yet approved, but this treatment has shown many positive results.

In Delhi, forty nine year old male patient intubated on ventilator who’s  now out of the ventilator after being given blood plasma therapy. Delhi is using it in a big way and now  7 or 8  Indian states started using blood plasma therapy.

When corona virus outbreak happened in China .China used the treatment to treat critical covid-19 patients. Initially Plasma therapy  started in China, which is  the origin of the pandemic  and they got certain promising results. Two trails were conducted and in those trails  15 corona virus patients shown improvement.

So finally, Plasma Therapy is not hundred percentage cure of coronavirus, it’s not a vaccine  but in this tough time, it is    “RAY OF HOPE” for Mankind

 

About Author – This article is originally published in TANx by   Tanay Singh 

(Author, Entrepreneur, Researcher, Life coach, Motivational Speaker, Business Consultant & Digital Marketer)