WHO Warns Against Early Use of Plasma Therapy
The World Health Organization has reacted reluctantly to US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he wants to accelerate the use of plasma therapy for the treatment of individual corona patients.
This involves the administration of convalescent (curative) plasma against Covid-19.
“Several clinical experiments are going on worldwide. Only a few of them have published interim results. And at this point the evidence that it works is still minimal,” said WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan.
Trump said Sunday on the eve of the Republican convention that the US drug authority has accelerated FDA approval for the plasma therapy.
“This is a powerful therapy,” said the president of the treatment, which uses antibodies from the blood of donors who have already gone through the infection.
Experts believe that the method may help fight the virus, but it is certainly not a decisive breakthrough. Trump himself spoke of a “historic breakthrough” in the treatment of the lung virus that will “save countless lives.”