Noida cop becomes plasma donor for 70-year-old COVID patient

Going beyond call of duty, a 27-year-old police constable, who recently recovered from COVID-19, came to the help of a senior citizen in Noida who needed blood plasma for her coronavirus treatment, according to officials.

Going beyond call of duty, a 27-year-old police constable, who recently recovered from COVID-19, came to the help of a senior citizen in Noida who needed blood plasma for her coronavirus treatment, according to officials. The family of the 70-year-old woman had been frantically looking for three days for a plasma donor when a senior Noida police officer got to know about it through social media, they said.

“On July 20, Assistant Commissioner of Police Rajneesh Kumar got to know about the family's unending search for plasma donor. He soon contacted his colleagues who had recovered recently from COVID-19 and were willing to volunteer,” a police spokesperson said. “Constable Amit, who is attached with Sector 49 police station, rose to the occasion and volunteered to donate his blood plasma. The plasma was donated to the elderly woman on Monday,” the spokesperson added.

Coincidentally, at the time of the donation, it was found that the blood group of the plasma donor and the recipient were also same, according to officials. SHO Sector 49 police station Dharmenda Sharma, who too recovered from COVID-19 recently, had volunteered with his subordinate for plasma donation as they had got to know that woman may require two units of plasma.

Doctors at the hospital later told them that one unit would be sufficient for the elderly woman, the officials said. The woman has slightly pneumonia at the moment but it was under control as doctors said she was recuperating well and should make a quick recovery now, they added.

Technically called the “convalescent-plasma therapy”, the treatment aims at using the immune power gained by a recovered person to treat a sick person, according to a statement of the Ministry of Science and Technology. The Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), the apex biomedical research body in India, has also approved of the novel treatment for COVID-19.

Around 60 police officials in the district have contracted the infection and 41 of them have recovered, while 16 are under treatment and one official has succumbed to the disease..