India removes plasma therapy from Covid-19 treatment guidelines

India has removed convalescent plasma therapy from its recommended treatment guidelines for Covid-19 as global experts had found no significant benefit from the use of plasma therapy.

Following the expert group observations, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has revised the clinical guidelines on Monday for the management of adult Covid-19 patients dropping plasma therapy.

The national task force of ICMR and experts from the Health Ministry periodically updates guidelines on the recommended mode of treatment.

Head of epidemiology and infectious disease of ICMR Samiran Panda told media that global evidence is not supporting the usage of plasma therapy, which was widely used in India for treating Covid-19 patients.

However, several international trials had also found no benefit for plasma therapy to treat the Covid-19 patients. Some experts also expressed fear that the use of such plasma may have played a role in facilitating new worrisome mutations to the virus.

British medical journal “The Lancet” recently reported that in a double-blinded trial on 5,000 patients who got the treatment in the UK, again no benefit was found in reducing mortality or improving patient outcomes.

The ICMR guidelines also continue to recommend ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine for mild disease but have also underlined that both drugs had “low certainty of evidence.”

Besides, India has witnessed a grim picture in terms of fresh deaths due to Covid-19 during the last 24 hours. A total of 4,329 patients died and 263,000 new cases were registered during the period, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Tuesday.

With the fresh cases, India’s total coronavirus cases reached 25,228,996, the data shows.