Harsh Vardhan flags off plasma donation campaign

Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare Dr Harsh Vardhan on July 19 flagged off a Plasma Donation Campaign at AIIMS Delhi. The event was co-organised by Delhi Police where 26 police personnel who had recovered from COVID-19 volunteered to donate their blood plasma.

Expressing his gratitude to the Delhi Police for this initiative he said, “It is very sad that a dozen Delhi police personnel died due to Corona. In spite of these casualties, they are doing a great job deploying personnel to contain the spread, while the number of containment zones has jumped from 200 to 600.”

The Minister saluted the contribution of these volunteers by conferring certificates to 26 Police constables. Of these, Shri Om Prakash was donating his plasma for the third time today.  The Union Minister stated that these donations will have a long-lasting impact on other countrymen who will get inspired to donate their plasma. Every single donor counts in our journey towards victory over COVID-19 and we need more and more of these plasma warriors to help fight the pandemic till a definitive treatment or vaccine is developed, he added.

He acknowledged the huge potential of this strategy and the government’s will to tap into it. He commented, “As of now convalescent plasma therapy has been approved for compassionate use with various plasma banks being set up to ensure round the clock availability. Despite the fact that India has one of the highest cure rates amongst COVID-19 patients, the plasma donations has yet to pick up. I am happy that AIIMS, New Delhi is organising this plasma donation campaign with the support of Delhi Police Corona Warriors.”

Plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients contains protective antibodies to the novel SARS-CoV-2 virus. It can provide immunity to patients of Covid-19 when transfused.  Considering its potential benefit, plasma therapy is provided to those patients who are not responding to conventional treatment. Anyone who has recovered from COVID-19, and has completed 28 days after the completion of treatment or home isolation, is between 18 to 60 years of age with a weight of more than 50 kg is eligible to donate their blood plasma.
The Blood Bank will assess their eligibility for blood donation and check the level of COVID-19 protective antibody levels in their blood before they can donate. The blood of a survivor usually has a high concentration of such antibodies and when given to a susceptible person, these antibodies circulate in blood, reach tissues and neutralize the virus. The process of donation is completed in one to three hours and plasma can be collected on same day.

More than 23,600 people cured in India

Proactive measures of Central and State/UT governments of aggressive testing and timely diagnosis has helped in detecting cases early. Effective clinical management of the moderate and severe cases through a well-executed Standard of Care protocol has ensured high rate of recovery among the COVID patients.

The last 24 hours saw a sharp increase of 23,672 COVID patients recovering. The gap between recovered patients and active COVID-19 cases has further increased to 3,04,043. The total number of recovered cases is 6,77,422. The recovery rate as of now is at 62.86%.

Medical attention is being provided to all the 3,73,379 active cases, in hospitals and home isolation.

The country’s testing infrastructure has been substantially ramped up. The testing strategy prescribed by ICMR allows all registered medical practitioners to recommend testing. The Rapid Antigen Point of Care (POC) Test coupled with the facilitation of widespread gold-standard RT-PCR based testing by States/UTs has resulted in a surge in the number of samples tested. 3,58,127 samples have been tested in the last 24 hours. With total of 1,37,91,869 samples tested the testing per million (TPM) for India has reached 9994.1.

Consistently expanding diagnostic lab network comprises of 1262 labs, including 889 labs in the government sector and 373 private labs.