Coronavirus: Project Platina is being funded through the Chief Minister's Relief Fund (Representational)
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray today launched the world's largest plasma therapy trials for COVID-19 - Project Platina - aimed at creating robust data for treating the disease for which no specific line of treatment exists. His son, minister Aaditya Thackeray said the project will also help the country's worst-hit state create infrastructure for this line of treatment.
The project will be free of cost, Aaditya Thackeray, the state minister for environment and tourism, said in a tweet.
Plasma therapy, or Convalescent Plasma Therapy (CPT) has proved to be useful in fighting other coronavirus diseases, such as SARS and MERS, and its use against COVID-19 has shown encouraging results on patients across the country and the world.
According to the details of the project shared on Twitter, the trials will be conducted in 17 medical colleges across the state, which accounts for 1.64 lakh coronavirus cases out of the national total of 5.48 lakh.
"This will not only give the world a large robust data for plasma therapy treatment but will also help us create infrastructure for this therapy across the state," he tweeted adding that the state has been working on plasma therapy based treatment for the novel coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic in India.
"The entire funding to support this plasma therapy trial has been done through the CM Relief fund and we hope this will be a landmark trial in the global fight against the covid pandemic," he said.
The Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) had first approved only 21 state-run hospitals to conduct plasma therapy trials of which two are in Mumbai - Nair Hospital and Kasturba Hospital. Later, permissions were also given to 16 other medical colleges and some private hospitals.
The announcement came hours after the Delhi government announced creation of a plasma bank to fight the disease in the national capital, which has more than 83,000 COVID-19 cases.
Urging those who have recovered from the infection to donate plasma to help other patients Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal assured that the state government will arrange transport for them to come to the plasma bank.