Daughter of 70-Year-Old Covid-19 Patient In ICU Appeals For Help From Patients Who Survived The Disease

On 3 Mar 2020, it was reported that there were 2 new Covid-19 cases in Singapore.

One is a 33-year-old Singaporean linked to the Wizlearn Technologies cluster and he’s currently warded in NCID.

And the second is a 70-year-old man who works at Fish Mart Sukuraya along West Coast Road.

No Travel History, No Links Established

According to the Ministry of Health (MOH), the 70-year-old man did not travel to affected countries and regions recently.

Despite that, he started showing symptoms on 25 Feb 2020.

He went to the GP on 27 Feb and 28 Feb 2020. And on 29 Feb, when he went to Singapore General Hospital (SGH), he was immediately isolated.

On 2 Mar, his test came out positive for Covid-19.

MOH also revealed that he has gone to work at Fish Mart Sakuraya along West Coast Road but did not handle food or serve customers.

As of 4 Mar 2020, MOH did not manage to establish a link to any of the existing clusters in Singapore.

No Links Means Somewhere in Singapore, There Might Be An Undetected Cluster

If you’ve been reading up on the Covid-19 daily updates, you’ll come to realise that the Ministry of Health places a lot of emphasis on four factors:

  • Number of new cases
  • The number of patients discharged
  • How many are in critical condition
  • And whether they have any links to existing clusters.

So if there’s no link to any of the clusters, it means that somewhere out there, there is an undetected case (or worse, cluster) of Covid-19 infected individuals infecting Singaporeans.

But don’t worry because there are plenty of cases initially reported that had no links. These cases subsequently had their links uncovered.

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Condition Took A Turn For The Worse

According to the patient’s daughter, Ashley Chung, his condition took a turn for the worse and he was sent to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) on 3 Mar 2020.

He had to be placed on assisted breathing.

Ashley learnt that convalescent plasma therapy was used in China to save critically ill patients.

She is appealing to the patients who managed to recover from the coronavirus to step forward and participate in the convalescent plasma trial.

Convalescent Plasma Therapy

While there is currently no licensed treatment or vaccines against Covid-19, doctors in China are infusing blood plasma of recovered patients into patients who are still fighting the disease.

And their efforts have shown promising results.

Doctors said that using blood plasma therapy is basically giving patients’ bodies a boost of antibodies, and when used at the right moment, can be extremely effective.

Even an expert from the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that this a “valid approach” to test.

According to a journal published on The Lancet, several studies conducted in 2015 during H1N1 showed that patients treated with convalescent plasma have a “significantly” higher chance of surviving.

It was theorised that antibodies within the plasma might have helped to suppress the virus.

They added that while not much is known about Covid-19, there is evidence to show that trying to administer the therapy will not result in “adverse” reactions.

NCID is currently seeking consent from recovered individuals to collect and use their blood plasma for the trial.