The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorised the use of convalescent plasma for the treatment of COVID-19 patients.
"I am pleased to make a truly historic announcement in our battle against China virus that will save countless lives. The FDA has issued an emergency use authorisation and that is such a powerful term, emergency use authorisation for a treatment known as convalescent plasma," Trump said during a press conference.
"This is a powerful therapy that transfuses very-very strong anti-bodies from the blood of recovered patients to help treat patients battling a current infection," he said.
The US President said today's action will dramatically expand access to this treatment.
"I want to thank the FDA, all of the people who have been working very hard on this. It showed tremendous potential. This is the only possible and it's only made possible because of Operation Warp Speed that is everybody working together," said Trump.
"We are years ahead of approval, If we went by the speed levels of the past administration we would be 2-3 yrs behind where we're today and that includes vaccines that you will be hearing about very soon, very shortly," he added.
The US President informed that to deliver treatment and vaccines to save lives, "we are removing unnecessary barriers and delays not by cutting corners but by marshalling the full power of the federal government." He stated that 48 million dollars were provided 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 per cent. It is a tremendous number," he said while adding that the FDA MIT Harvard Hospital have also found convalescent plasma to be a very effective method of fighting this horrible disease.
"Based on the science and the data, the FDA has made the independent determination that the treatment is safe and very effective. Recently, we provided up to 270 million dollars to the American Red Cross and America's Blood Centers to support the collection of up to 360,000 units of plasma," he said.
The US President also appealed to Americans who have recovered from coronavirus to donate plasma.
"In late July, we launched a nationwide campaign to ask patients who have recovered and these are patients that have been incredible the way they have donated. But these are people recovered from the virus to donate plasma, since then weekly plasma donations have doubled and today I once again urge all Americans who have recovered from the virus to go to coronavirus.gov, sign up and donate plasma," he said.
( With inputs from ANI )
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