Maharashtra to go ahead with plasma therapy trials: Rajesh Tope

Nisha Nambiar | TNN | Updated: Apr 30, 2020, 06:52 IST

Rajesh Tope

PUNE: Maharashtra health minister Rajesh Tope on Wednesday said plasma therapy trials for Covid-19 will continue in the state.
The minister’s statement to TOI comes a day after the Union government said the procedure, until its efficacy is fully proven, should only be used for research and not as a regular line of treatment for Covid-19 patients.
Plasma therapy is the transfusion of antibody-rich blood plasma from recovered Covid-19 patients into those who are critically ill with the infection.
Tope maintained that these are trials that have been allowed and more centres in the state would be roped in once they meet Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) guidelines.
“We have centres approaching ICMR for permission to conduct plasma therapy trials. We will back this as research and trials are important. In Mumbai, the first patient to have received this therapy — a 50-year-old man at Lilavati hospital — is recovering well. We are now scheduling another patient from Nair hospital in Mumbai. We would want other centres, especially those in Pune, to carry out similar trials,” he said.
Both Pune and Mumbai have emerged as Covid-19 hotspots. For Pune, Tope suggested that the civic administration start the process of securing consent from people for trials. He said the plasma therapy trial in Mumbai was carried out as per protocol and with clearances from donor, receiver and the ethics committee. “The municipal commissioner adhered to all the norms when it was carried out. We are readying for more trials,” he said.
Pune divisional commissioner Deepak Mhaisekar told TOI that officials have contacted 28 recovered patients, who are currently undergoing counselling. “We are in talks with the ICMR authorities. We expect to receive approvals for the trials within a day or two. Our team is reaching out to those who have recovered from Covid-19 for their consent. We are meeting all criteria. Those in the trials should be above 18 and weigh at least 55kg. Women participants should have borne one child or more,” he said.
Hospitals across several states have applied to the ICMR for permissions to start plasma or immune therapy. Health officials in the state government said centres in Kolhapur, Solapur and Nagpur too are likely to carry out trials after securing approvals.
Minister for education Amit Deshmukh said permissions from the ICMR have come through for almost all medical colleges, which will now start trials soon. “The entire process will be executed by the colleges' respective deans, who are ready to start the therapy. We are fully aware that these are trials, but they need to be done as we don’t have a vaccine yet,” he said.
Meanwhile, the government is planning to set up 20 new Covid-19 testing labs across the state. Three of the labs have already been given approvals and are likely to become operational soon.
Currently, there are 50 laboratories across the state with a testing capacity of 10,000 swabs per day. These new testing labs will add the capacity of testing swabs for Covid-19 by another 3,500.