The first COVID-19 patient, who was administered the plasma therapy on compassionate grounds at Max Hospital in Saket, New Delhi has been completely recovered. He was discharged on Sunday.

Dr Sangeeta told ANI that this is an encouraging and positive news for India. The patient is discharged will be in home quarantine for two weeks as per the government rule.

The 49-year-old critically ill patient was tested positive for coronavirus on 4th April. His condition deteriorated in few days and was put on external oxygen to maintain saturation. He developed pneumonia with Type I respiratory failure and was on ventilator support from 8th April.

As the patient showed no improvement in his condition, his family members requested the hospital for the administration of plasma therapy on the compassionate grounds. It is a first of its kind treatment modality which was used for COVID-19 in India.

The family then arranged a donor for extracting plasma. The donor had recovered from the COVID-19 infection and had confirmed by two successive negative reports that was three weeks before her donation. The donor was again tested COVID-19 negative during the time of donation along with other standard tests to rule out other infections such as Hep B, Hep C and HIV.

The patient was then administered fresh plasma as a treatment modality on 14th April, as a side-line to standard treatment protocols.

Max Hospital doctors had stated that a single donor can donate 400 ml of plasma and can save two lives. 200 ml of plasma is sufficient to treat one coronavirus patient. Soon after receiving the plasma treatment, the patient showed progressive improvement and by the 4th day, he was removed from the ventilator support on the morning of 18th April and was continued on supplementary oxygen.

The doctors informed that he started to take the oral feeds in 24-hour after weaned off the ventilator support. He was then shifted to a room with 24-hour monitoring after testing negative twice within 24 hours.

Source: ET Healthworld