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US: Plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients to be used to treat infected people

s the number of positive coronavirus cases rises in the United States, the country will now look to collect plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients which will be used to treat other patients infected by the disease.

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As the number of positive coronavirus cases rises in the United States, the country will now look to collect plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients which will be used to treat other patients infected by the disease.

The practice will involve injecting the blood products from COVID-19 recovered patients and then injecting it on those people who are currently suffering. 

An international non-profit company named AABB has issued new guidelines under which blood centres in the US will collect. The century-old treatment called convalescent plasma therapy has been used in previous outbreaks like 1918 flu, and measles in the 1930s. It has also been used in treating victims of Ebola, SARS and H1N1 influenza.

The new guideline comes after the federal Food and Drug Administration gave the nod for the emergency use of convalescent plasma by doctors for patients who became critically ill after suffering from COVID-19.    

Even though the plasma helped in reducing the symptoms, and deaths in the previous outbreaks, there have been no clinical trials to prove its efficacy.

In China, the epicenter of the outbreak, anecdotal evidence showed that passive antibody therapy helps patients combat COVID-19 until the patient's body can develop its own antibodies.
 
In United States, the death toll has surpassed China, with more than 5000 deaths, and 215,357 confirmed deaths.

Worldwide, the total number of coronavirus cases stands at 9,50,713, and more than 48,000 deaths.

The Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had on Wednesday expressed serious concern over the 'near exponential growth' of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, as the number of cases hiked by a lakh over the mere span of a single day. The worldwide death toll, too, has doubled in just a week.

Ghebreyesus urged people across the world to join hands to defeat the coronavirus.

"As we enter the fourth month since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I am deeply concerned about the rapid escalation and global spread of infection," the WHO chief told a virtual news conference, "Over the past five weeks, we have witnessed a near exponential growth in the number of new cases, reaching almost every country. The number of deaths has more than doubled in the past week. In the next few days, we will reach one million confirmed cases and 50,000 deaths."

Warning that the virus not only bears disease and death, but also serious social, economic, and political consequences especially from Africa and the Latin American region, Ghebreyesus said, "It is critical that we ensure these countries are well equipped to detect, test, isolate and treat COVID-19 cases, and identify contacts."

The WHO chief urged governments to implement social welfare measures to safeguard poor people from going hungry during the crisis. He also sought debt relief for poor nations.

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