This morning, Ministry of Health in Britain announced that it will start experiments to determine whether the blood plasma obtained from donors cured of Covid-19 disease could be an effective treatment for patients who are in serious condition with coronavirus disease.
The ministry said that up to five thousand patients who are in a serious condition can be treated with this method every week as part of a new treatment protocol of patients.
The plasma that is taken from Covid-19 patients can be transferred to patients who struggle to produce antibodies against the virus inside their bodies. The Ministry of Health said that the so-called recovery plasma was used as an effective treatment during an outbreak of SARS between 2002 and 2004.
It added that in parallel with the general randomized clinical trial, the government is promoting the general program for plasma collection so that treatment can be generalized widely if proven effective.
Blood is drawn from an arm and distributed through a device that separates the plasma and then returns it back to the donor. This process takes about 45 minutes and provides two plasma units from each donation process, which can also be frozen and stored before any need for this plasma in the future.
The public health service will contact people who have recovered from Covid-19 in England and who could be potential donors.
Plasma collection will be increased during April and May to deliver up to ten thousand plasma units to the public health apparatus per week, enough to treat 5,000 patients with Covid-19 per week.
"I hope this treatment will be a major milestone in our war against this disease," said Health Minister Matt Hancock.
On the other hand, Reuters quoted Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, deputy chief Physician saying that the UK is leading the world's largest experiments to find a treatment for Covid-19 with more than 7,000 people participating so far in testing a series of medications.
Follow the latest news on Google News
