Man who battled COVID-19 ready to donate plasma

Nine patients from Tiruppur district discharged on Saturday

April 21, 2020 10:57 pm | Updated 10:57 pm IST - Tiruppur

A 38-year-old man from Tiruppur, who recently recovered from COVID-19, said that he was willing to donate his plasma for the convalescent plasma therapy treatment, if approached.

Speaking to The Hindu over the phone, the man said that he was among the nine patients from Tiruppur district who were discharged from Government Medical College and ESI Hospital, Coimbatore, on Saturday. “All of us are ready to co-operate if they ask us to donate plasma,” he said.

Plasma theraphy

Convalescent plasma therapy involves administering the plasma component of the blood derived from patients who have recovered from COVID-19 to those patients who are severely affected in an attempt to boost their ability to fight the virus. This procedure is still being subjected to clinical trials.

Currently under house quarantine, he was one of the attendees of the Delhi conference who returned to Tiruppur on March 24, a day before the nation-wide lockdown came into force. When test results confirmed that he was positive for COVID-19, he was admitted to ESI Hospital on April 1. His 38-year-old wife and two sons aged 10 and 7 were also quarantined in the hospital, although he claimed that they were not infected.

During his treatment, he claimed that he did not have any of the COVID-19 symptoms – fever, coughs or breathlessness. “The talk among our relatives that I got COVID-19, the roads near our house being blocked and my family being admitted in the hospital – all these things caused me a lot of distress,” he recalled.

The man said that he did not feel particularly happy when the doctors said that he had recovered from COVID-19 and will be discharged. “I wanted to go home along with my wife and sons, but they insisted that I should leave immediately. Now, I am alone in my house,” he said.

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