PANAJI: The Goa government on Friday said it would continue to perform plasma therapy on COVID-19 patients as it has yielded goods results in the state so far, Health Minister Vishwajit Rane said.
The move of administering plasma and giving medicines like remdesivir and steroids is leading to good recoveries among the COVID-19 patients at the state-run facilities, he said.
"The Goa government will continue to perform plasma therapy on the patients as per the advice given by the state-level expert committee, which comprises doctors from government and private sectors," he said.
Rane said that 263 patients were given plasma therapy during their treatment.
"The recovery rate is around 70 per cent, which is good," he said.
As per the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the Centre was considering to remove convalescent plasma therapy from the national clinical management protocol for COVID-19.
"But we are not going to stop plasma therapy on our patients.
We will continue with it as advised by our experts," Rane said, in response to a query.
The state government does not want to have a "false sense of satisfaction" over the drop in the number of COVID-19 cases, the minister said, adding that 2,000 to 2,500 tests need to be conducted daily to know the exact number of infected patients.
He said that multinational companies including upcoming international a greenfield airport at Mopa, can tie up with the private labs to test their employees.
"The government facility of testing is for the common people," he added.
According to him, antigen tests will be conducted on a mass scale.
The minister also said that the state government has distributed around 3,500 home isolation kits for those patients who chose to go for home quarantine.
"A majority of patients now prefer home isolation, due to which the beds remain empty in the state-run hospitals," he said.