Hospital in southern Thailand has become the first in the country to successfully treat a Covid-19 sufferer using blood plasma from a recovered patient.
The Prince of Songkhla hospital in Songkhla province announce on Wednesday morning (May 20) about their progress in fighting the virus.
Doctors said they used the blood plasma treatment on a severely ill male patient who had been in a coma for four days.
The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patient received two 200cc dose of the plasma before his condition started to gradually get better within a couple of days.
Dr Saranyu Chusri, an infectious disease specialist, said the method was the last option for the critically ill patient in ICU as standard treatment was not effective.
He said: "We brought the patient from the province, Narathiwat in the deep south.
He was admitted with severe pneumonia and respiratory failure.
"We started treating him with the standard procedure using medications for three days but he was not getting better so we had to tried using a cured patient's blood plasma.
"It only took four days for the patient to recover and on the fourth day we could take off his respirator.'' The doctor added that not every patient could receive this treatment due to its complexity.
He said: "Before we could initiated this treatment we had to ensure that the person receiving the blood would be compatible.
"In this case, fortunately the patient has an O-blood type while the giver has a B-blood type.
However this treatment is not a guaranteed success and still needs development."
