The Sardar Vallabhbhai PatelHospital here has signed an MoU with the Indian Council of Medical Research to carry out study on the safety and efficacy of convalescent plasma to limit coronavirus-associated complications in a patient, an official said on Tuesday.The civic-run hospital recently got permission from the ICMR to carry out plasma therapy trials on COVID-19 patients, and the plasma collected from a recovered person was administered to a patient at the medical facility here for the first time on Monday, Ahmedabad Municipal Commissioner Vijay Nehra said.Now, the Sardar VallabhbhaiPatel Hospital (SVP) will carry out ICMR's multi-centric collaborative study for phase-2 open level randomised control trial to assess the safety and efficacy of convalescent plasma to limit COVID-19 associated complications in moderate disease, he said."An MoU has been signed between ICMR and SVP Hospital, and a fast-track approval for the study centre, the first in the country, has been granted," Nehra said.Transfusion of plasma collected from a recovered person into a coronavirus patient will be the first subject to be studied at the centre, he said."It is not to be done on one or two patients, but a detailed research will be carried out and is a complicated process. We have been in constant touch with ICMR on this," Nehra said.The SVP Hospital recently secured permission from the ICMR to carry out plasma therapy trial on COVID-19 patients. The plasma extracted from a person who recovered from coronavirus was administered to a COVID-19 patient on Monday, Nehra said.Meanwhile, the SVP Hospital has identified a second donor for the study, and plasma collected from the person would be administered to a potential recipient, he said.The ICMR recently announced that it will collaborate with eligible institutes for the study and will fund it.Convalescent plasma is an experimental procedure for COVID-19 patients.As per the guidelines, hospitals and institutions planning to provide this modality of treatment should do so as a clinical trial, with protocols which are cleared by the Institutional Ethics Committee.At this moment, the ICMR does not recommend this as a treatment option outside of clinical trials.In convalescent plasma therapy, antibodies from the blood of patients who have recovered from COVID-19 are used to treat severely infected patients.The study is aimed at assessing the efficacy of convalescent plasma to limit complications in COVID-19 patients, and to evaluate the safety of treatment with anti SARS-CoV-2 plasma in coronavirus-infected patients.The ICMR recently said it has received 99 applications from institutes willing to take part in the study.
