New Delhi: The government is considering whether convalescent plasma therapy, which is widely used by hospitals in India for treating Covid-19 patients, should be discarded from the list of treatment options under the national guidelines, the Centre said on Tuesday.
While addressing a press briefing, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) director general Dr Balram Bhargava said, “We have had discussions in the national task force. We are now discussing it with the joint monitoring group for the deletion of plasma therapy from the national guidelines.”
“That is the discussion ongoing and more or less we are reaching towards that,” the health research secretary said.
“We have done the largest trial on plasma therapy in the world with 464 patients across 39 hospitals and with more than 350 authors. It has now been accepted in BMJ (the British Medical Journal) and we have received proof, it will appear very soon … more than 10 pages of hardcore science talking about the role of plasma in Covid,” Dr Bhargava said.
The ICMR study (PLACID) had concluded that plasma therapy is not associated with reduction in mortality or progression to severe Covid-19.
The ICMR director general added that discussions are also underway on recent findings of solidarity trial of the World Health Organisation (WHO) on the lack of efficacy of drugs such as remdesivir and hydroxychloroquine in treating Covid patients.