When there are many dead, it is always late to ask if anything else could be done and if anyone will ever answer.
In our country, a health system that works like a leopard spot is contrasted by frontline doctors who are leaving us “feathers” to save us. Fortunately we have it in the DNA: when we Italians say you do something, we don’t do it. Let’s first try to understand why we were given that command. How it happened to the molecular parasitologist Andrea Cristanti making mass swabs in Vò Euganeo he understood that asymptomatics are a source of contagion and should be isolated.
IN SOME HOSPITALS, THERE ARE NO MORE DEATH PER COVID FROM A MONTH
Autonomy of thought and a good dose of courage and responsibility, combined with a lot of competence in a sea of mediocrity, today leads some medical centers to tell about their successful therapy against Covid 19: serotherapy. Yes why in some hospitals there have been no deaths for Covid for a month and the Coronavirus disappears after a treatment that lasts from 2 to 48 hours, eliminating any trace of symptoms. Wow, you say, and how come they don’t say it on TV and you don’t hear about it?
“We haven’t had a death in a month. The data is splendid. The therapy works but nobody knows it, “says enthusiastically but with a vein of sarcasm Giuseppe De Donno, director of pneumology and intensive respiratory therapy at the Carlo Poma in Mantua. In fact, in this strange short circuit between science, politics and information, something else happens. “Every day on TV,” says De Donno, “we listen to those who denied that Coronavirus could arrive in Italy or spoke of flu or that it only affected the elderly. The only ones who understand us have been working belly-up since the first day of the epidemic and don’t have time to live on television. They invented this fantastic therapy but unfortunately the space available so far in the media is small “.
De Donno: “I’m excited to see people healed so quickly. It is the only rational treatment, both biochemical and immunological of the Coronavirus that is currently in place. There will be no drug more effective than plasma. It is like the magic bullet, specific immunoglobulins are used against Coronvirus. It should be used early. If instead you expect the patient to die … then you make a mistake and it only takes the priest, that’s it! But it’s the same as aspirin’s speech in heart attack prevention. If you use it in a person who is already heart disease, it doesn’t matter. ” The limits of therapy? De Donno explains them laughingly: “It costs little, it is feasible and even democratic. We have 7 or 8 donors every day. “
About 80 Carlo Poma patients from Mantua have been treated successfully, including a pregnant woman named Pamela, who left Covid in a few hours. Among the cured Carlo Poma doctors there are those who donate blood, such as Dr. Mauro Pagani, director of Plasmapheresis: “Now I am well and I want to help those in need”.
It works like this. “Those who donate must be healthy, cured of Covid and have neutralizing antibodies,” says the director of Immunohematology and Transfusion Medicine Massimo Franchini. “600 ml of plasma are taken, from which 2 doses of 300 ml each are obtained. The protocol involves 3 administrations. After the first administration there is a clinical laboratory monitoring and in the case of no response there is the second administration and so on. 48 hours apart. Compatibility for plasma is done on the blood group. ” Franchini explains that plasma has a significant level of viral safety and is an absolutely safe and rigorous product and goes into detail: “If the vaccine, which we don’t have, would make you produce antibodies, this which is passive immunotherapy transfers the antibodies. from the cured to the sick. The patient does nothing and creates nothing. But it works to save it. ”
When we ask him why this road does not spread, he explains that he is actually being adopted in Lombardy. Experimentation began on a core of 45 people between Mantua and San Matteo di Pavia, all successfully cured.
Who certainly does not have time for the tv catwalks is the Director of the Immunohematology and Transfusion Medicine Service of the polyclinic San Matteo di Pavia, Cesare Perotti, who developed the protocol and study on blood and is called “hyperimmune plasma”.
But is it an empirical intervention?
Perotti: “There is nothing empirical here but it is done in situations of great epidemic. There is a validation of hyperimmune plasma therapy that is unmatched in the world. I am known for not being one who ‘shoots’ them and I can tell you that at the moment it is the safest plasma in the world, because Italian legislation has strict rules that are not found in Europe and in any other country in the world, not even in the United States. Not only do we have the mandatory plasma law exams to be transfused, but we have additional exams and the neutralizing antibody titer which is something we only do at the Pavia Polyclinic. Not even the Americans are able to do it right now. It has no equal in the world. We know the power, the ability that each accumulated plasma has to kill the virus. Each plasma is made differently because each patient is different, but we are able to know which one to use for each specific case. “
An important tool this to be used in case, after exiting the quarantine, a contagion scenario arises again. Perotti: “We are accumulating plasma for a possible second wave of infections. It is a therapy for those who are sick today. Welcome to the vaccine but pending the protocol it works! The study has been filed. Everything they told her, which comes out in 48 hours, is true. ”
Of course there are still thousands of people tested but serotherapy is a modern cure used since 1880.
