Blood plasma
treatment, one of the first methods used by doctors when the novel coronavirus
spread across the world making millions sick over weeks, should not be given to
people with mild or moderate COVID-19 illness, the World Health Organization
(WHO) has now said. Convalescent plasma therapy, often called plasma therapy,
showed early signs of great success for COVID-19 patients.

The WHO, in advice
published in the British Medical Journal, says that “current evidence shows
that it does not improve survival or reduce the need for mechanical
ventilation, and it is costly and time-consuming to administer,” AFP reports.

The UN-backed
health agency said that for patients with severe and critical illness,
convalescent plasma therapy should only be administered as part of a clinical
trial and made a ‘strong recommendation’ against the use of blood plasma in
people who do not have serious symptoms of COVID-19.

Convalescent
plasma therapy is the liquid part of the blood that contains the antibodies
produced by the body when a person has recovered from COVID-19 infection and is
then introduced into the body of a sick person. When the pandemic began, plasma
therapy was one of the earliest methods of treatment deployed by doctors at a
time when there were no drugs or vaccines to treat COVID-19.

According to WHO,
evidence from 16 trials involving 16,236 patients ranging from non-severe to
severe, led them to make the recommendation against plasma therapy.

WHO’s advice against
plasma therapy comes at a time when infections from a highly-mutative variant
of SARS-CoV-2 is spreading across the world. The omicron variant is said to be
capable of eluding vaccine protection rendering the world once again in a space
where there is no clear treatment for the infection.

However, omicron
variant infections continue to remain mild and no deaths related to the variant
have been reported yet.