Chandigarh: For the first time in Punjab, the state government has decided to support the medical team of SPS Apollo Hospital in Ludhiana to conduct plasma therapy on Ludhiana’s Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Anil Kohli, 52, who has tested positive for coronavirus a few days ago.
An official spokesperson of the government confirmed this in a statement after Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh reviewed the Covid-19 situation in the state via video-conference.
The treatment includes injecting patients with plasma from people who have recovered from the infection, and whose bodies have, therefore, generated the antibodies required to fight the virus.
So far, Punjab has 211 positive cases, of which 15 have died, according to the government’s bulletin. A total of 30 people have been discharged so far.
The state continues to be among the top in the country in terms of fatalities, raising eyebrows over the treatment protocols being followed to treat Covid-19 patients.
Also read: 5-day break for staff, proper kits — how Punjab hospital is handling Covid-19 in hotspot
Collaboration between govt & pvt hospital
The family of the ACP, who is admitted in the Apollo hospital and is on ventilator for the past several days, has given permission for the plasma therapy, for which the director of health services is coordinating efforts to get potential plasma donors.
On Thursday, Max Hospital in New Delhi started the plasma treatment on a Covid-19 patient on ventilator. His father had already succumbed to the disease.
The therapy is being arranged by Punjab government’s health adviser Dr K.K. Talwar, who is also the former director of PGIMER.
On Talwar’s request, Dr Neelam Marwaha, former head of department, blood transfusion at PGI, has agreed to guide the efforts for plasma therapy, the spokesperson said.
Dr Raj Bahadur, vice-chancellor of Baba Farid University for Medical Sciences, said that currently, all three government medical colleges in the state did not have either the manpower or the technology to conduct plasma therapy.
A senior officer in the chief minister’s office said: “The effort is going to be a unique collaboration between a private hospital and the government and the idea is to use the therapy as a compassionate move to save lives.”
He added that in case the plasma therapy shows results, it can be used on other critical patients as well.
The ACP had no travel history
The ACP (Ludhiana North) tested positive for Covid-19 a few days ago and has remained on ventilator ever since.
Although he had no travel history, he is supposed to have got the infection while on duty at a sabzi mandi. His first sample tested negative but the next test came out to be positive.
Kohli’s wife, driver, who is a constable from Ferozepur, and SHO of Jodhewal police station, which comes under the ACP’s jurisdiction, also tested positive for the virus.
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has planned to conduct two clinical trials of plasma therapy in the next two weeks for the treatment of critically ill Covid-19 patients.
The ICMR has invited letter of intent from health institutions and hospitals to participate in these controlled trials.
The ICMR, however, made it clear that it does not recommend the plasma therapies as treatment outside clinical trial settings.
Kerala was the first state in India to initiate the protocol for plasma therapy.
Meanwhile, Punjab registered another coronavirus-related death Friday. A 58-year-old revenue official died in Ludhiana of a heart attack while battling the disease.
Also read: Preacher who was Punjab’s 1st Covid-19 death could have been a ‘super-spreader’
Unfortunately, ACP Kohli passed away this afternoon. It’s not been disclosed whether he was given the plasma therapy.
India’s health minister and his bumbling gang of ICMR, Task Force, NIV, CDSCO sarkari bapus should be sacked for failing to suppress the transmission. Here are some of the fiascos:
(a) Health Ministry—for repeatedly Lying to the people by way of denying the community transmission; ICMR earlier stated that 40% of severe patients had NO contact with patients with or without travel history. Does it mean they got magically infected without community transmission? It is also responsible for a low number of ICU beds, low number of ventilators (about 8,500 for a population of 1.3 billion), inadequate funding of government hospitals, no coordinated national plan (each state is doing its own thing) and largely ignoring private companies in this fight.
(b) ICMR—for imposing a highly restrictive testing criteria since the start of epidemic; only symptomatic patients with travel history were tested; even after four months, the asymptomatic carriers are not getting tested in most states; No major randomized testing. ICMR has conducted COVID-19 tests on only 0.017% of India’s population, as of this week.
(c) NIV—for purposefully sitting on 15 applications from Indian diagnostic test kit makers for more than 70 days (Since Feb). This is in spite of roping in few more Indian institutes to validate the test kits. NIV had the gall to ask the companies to ask for FDA/ EU certification, when FDA itself is going for “emergency authorization,” without its validation. Now, ICMR has gone ahead and imported 50,000 antibody test kits from China, ignoring the domestic test kit manufacturers. Further, those antibody tests does not tell the presence/absence of the virus. It’s indicative of only the spread of the virus in the population.
(d) CDSCO—In spite of Convalescent therapy being used in SARS, H1N1 and ebola epidemics, CDSCO dragged its feet for four months in giving approval to the use of that therapy in COVID-19. So far, only ICMR and few other institutes (about 3-5) have been granted approval. When are they planning to give approval to the hospitals around the country?