Chandigarh, May 5 (IANS): The PGI Hospital here has been selected as one of the centres by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to conduct trials of convalescent plasma therapy in patients with serious Covid infection, the hospital said on Tuesday.

With this approval, serious sick Covid 19 positive patients admitted in the Nehru Hospital Extension block will be eligible to get this form of treatment.

In this trial, antibodies from the blood of patients who have recovered from Covid-19 are used to treat severely infected patients.

However, the exact role of this therapy in the treatment of coronavirus positive patients is still debatable and hence the ICMR decided to conduct a multi-centric study to clarify its role in these patients, said the hospital in a statement.

The collaborative departments for this trial are Departments of Internal Medicine, Anaesthesia and Intensive Care, Transfusion Medicine, Endocrinology, Virology and Community Medicine.

A team of the Department of Transfusion Medicine will start getting in touch with patients who have recovered from Covid-19 infection and would explain the nature of the study.

The study is aimed at assessing the safety and efficacy of convalescent plasma to limit complications in the patients.