Humanity is braving a pandemic in the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Virus (SARS-COV-2). Coronavirus disease abbreviated as COVID-19 is caused by SARS-COV-2 virus, in layman’s terms, infecting/affecting lungs in majority of the cases, intestines, liver and kidneys at lower frequency. The SAR-COV2 infection is apparently (physiologically) characterized with the onset, as well as the severity of symptoms often confused with “flu” like conditions at the beginning. Based on the spectrum and severity of symptoms, patients are likely to be roughly registered as “Non-severe” and “Severe” patients. SARS-COV-2 virus presents with multiple symptoms, arguably begins with sore throat, dry cough, fatigue (body ache) low-grade fever often advancing to high grade with the manifestation of breathlessness/difficulty in breathing (dyspnea), and malaise. In most of the cases, transitioning of low fever to high fever is taken as an indicative for severity of symptoms and therefore disease progression. From pathological perspective, Global data on COVID19 exerts us into believing the existence of collinearity between setting in of high fever, cytokine storm and lung fibrosis, leading to critically impaired respiratory function.
COVID-19, as per World Health Organization (WHO) data has affected about 465,915 cases as on date while framing this article, with 21,031 confirmed deaths and as many as 200 countries affected. Mortality due to COVID-19, entirely representing the “Severe patient” cohort is mostly due to Respiratory failure, not limited to but in majority of patients, showing a prevalence in underlying diseases (in the order of most to least) like Hypertension, COPD, Diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Though the mortality rate among “severe/critical patient” cohort varies across the countries depending on the age and severity of comorbidity. The rough figures coming across the world indicate that on average 80 out of 100 patients are “non-severe” and all of them survive. Remaining 20 categorized as “severe patients” stay critical for longer period out of which 15-17 over recover and show no signs of disease relapse (with the exception of disease recurring being reported in few unsolicited cases). This piece of information is important to eliminate the perception that every aged patient with comorbidity expires due to COVID19. Currently, there are no medicines or vaccines available to treat this disease and the treatment options have been limited to the use of other broad specific antiviral drugs alone or in combination with “experimental therapeutic drugs”. In this article, we will emphasis over the suitability of “Convalescent Plasma/Sera” treatment modality in a given situation.
