Since opening, 11 donations at Ggm's lone plasma bank

New Delhi: While plasma therapy has been an option for moderate to critical COVID-19 patients in Gurugram for a while now, since the district administration, officially backed the mode of experimental treatment, only 10 Coronavirus patients in the city have been administered plasma therapy and 11 recovered patients have donated plasma at the district's only plasma bank operating out of the Sector Rotary Blood Bank.

The district, on July 31, inaugurated the plasma bank, with administration officials encouraging recovered patients to volunteer for plasma donations. On the first day, five patients had donated. While inaugurating the bank, officials in the health department had said a database of 4,000 recovered patients had been created, of which 100 were evaluated and found to be completely fit to donate plasma.

"Fortunately, the number of critical patients in Gurugram is low and this has led to a smaller number of people using this form of treatment," Dr Anuj Garg, Chief Nodal Officer of Gurugram told Millennium Post. According to the latest data, the district has recorded over 9,600 cases so far but only 60 of the active cases are currently hospitalised, of which seven are either on ventilator or oxygen support. Most active patients — a majority of whom are asymptomatic — are being treated under home isolation.

Dr Garg said that plasma therapy has just recently got the administration's backing and the low number of patients receiving this treatment could also be owing to many patients not knowing much about it. "Our officials are now also in the process to promote this form of therapy," he said.

While convalescent plasma therapy right now is only available for residents of Gurugram, officials have not ruled out the possibility of this therapy being extended to other patients in Haryana. Gurugram and Faridabad are the only two districts in the state that offer this treatment as of now. Meanwhile, with Gurugram consistently reporting less than 100 new cases for the last few days, the doubling rate here has increased to 108 days. The case fatality rate has come down to 1.3 per cent and the daily positivity rate is currently at seven per cent.