"Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for investigational convalescent plasma for the treatment of COVID-19 in hospitalized patients as part of the agency’s ongoing efforts to fight COVID-19," the FDA said in a Sunday statement, adding that "this product may be effective in treating COVID-19 and that the known and potential benefits of the product outweigh the known and potential risks of the product."
US President Donald Trump said during a Sunday White House press conference that this treatment will help reduce the coronavirus mortality rate in the United States. The US currently has the largest COVID-19 death toll of all the countries in the world (over 176,600).
"We provided 48 million dollars to fund the Mayo Clinic study that tested the efficacy of convalescent plasma for patients with the virus. Through this study, over 100,000 Americans have already enrolled to receive this treatment and it is proven to reduce mortality by 35 percent," Trump said on Sunday.
According to the FDA, convalescent plasma will be distributed in the US to treat both suspected and laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 patients who have been hospitalized.
"This is a powerful therapy that transfuses very very strong antibodies from the blood of recovered patients to help treat patients battling a current infection," Trump said on Sunday, adding that the new FDA authorization will dramatically expand access to the treatment.
Clinical trials of convalescent plasma being used as a treatment for COVID-19 are still ongoing, but thousands of coronavirus patients in the US have already been treated with plasma. The plasma treatment is an old medical approach that has been used since the 1890s, including for the treatment of the flu and chickenpox.
The FDA is now encouraging Americans who have recovered from COVID-19 to donate plasma.
Meanwhile Russia has already registered the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine, called Sputnik V. According to Russian authorities, up to 2 million doses of the new vaccine are planned to be produced monthly by the end of this year. Russia could start exporting its COVID-19 vaccine in the spring of 2021, according to Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov.
