No plasma donors as hospitals battle to save coronavirus patients

Bengaluru: With the Covid cases surging and the hospitals falling short of antiviral drug Remdesivir it is learnt that several corporate hospitals are looking for plasma donors. But there are hardly any donors.

Co-founder of covidhelplinebangalore.com Ameen-e-Mudassar said, "We are receiving 12-15 requests per day on the website from corporate hospitals. However, the number of donors is very low, almost nil."

Dr Vishal Rao, Director, Centre for Academic Research - HCG Cancer Hospital, agreed that the demand for plasma has increased over the last few months from almost nil in December 2020 to five in January and 25 now.

"We currently have nearly 450 patients in ICU in Karnataka, a steep rise since Jan-Feb. We know that Remdesivir is not effective and hospitals across the globe are now relying on plasma to save lives. In our analysis, the recovery among critically ill patients who have undergone plasma therapy has been around 60 percent. The state government last year also said that it would give Rs 5,000 to volunteers who donated plasma but it didn't yield much result then. However, those who donated plasma during the first phase are yet to receive the amount. They have been following up with us. We hope to get some clarity soon," Rao said. Last year, the government had set up a plasma bank each at Bengaluru and Mangaluru. However, the banks have never received sufficient donors.

District Health Officer (DHO), Dakshina Kannada, DR Ramachandra told The Hans India, "Yes, we do have a plasma bank but hardly any donor came forward."

Dr Rao also concurred and said, "Yes, there is an acute shortage of plasma in Bengaluru. We need to have fresh donors who have recovered from the infection within three months. Many of the old donors do not have good antibodies now."

The task force committee met Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa recently and explained him the need for increasing plasma therapy accessibility to more patients and encouraging donors.

"We met CM recently to appraise him of the situation. He will be writing to the home minister, BBMP and the Committee to see how we can make this accessible. We are hopeful that we can promote this science," Rao added.

The Government of Karnataka along with Rajiv Gandhi University has framed some guidelines on plasma therapy and access.

Recently, researchers in Germany have found that the South African and Brazillian variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus might evade plasma therapy.

Rao explained, "There is only a hypothesis without any experimental proof where they have assumed that "tachyphylaxis" lead to point mutations could be from Anti Virals, Monoclonal antibodies or any other therapy against the virus. Thus, assuming that plasma antibodies of another variant strain may not work.

In current scenario with no treatment available in our

armamentarium, we would make every sincere attempt to safeguard life of patients who are in moderate and severe illness using plasma."

Benefits of plasma therapy 

♦ lower severe infections

♦ lower requirement of ICU

♦ lower mortality