The researcher who directs this study, Karine Lacombe, had evoked Thursday this stop of the samples during a hearing at the National assembly, adding that patients were going to be included in the trial in Mayotte and in Guyana, where the coronavirus circulates still actively.
“The EFS no longer collects plasma donations as part of the Coviplasm clinical trial because we have enough plasmas from convalescent donors to meet the needs of this study”, the establishment told AFP.
He also claims to have constituted “a stockpile” complementary “to allow the sick to be taken care of in the event of a demonstration of the efficiency of plasma transfusion and of resumption of the epidemic, the time to resume sampling”.
“No preliminary results”
Launched on April 7 by the EFS, the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) and the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), this trial consists of injecting patients suffering from Covid -19 the plasma of recovered patients, containing antibodies directed against the coronavirus, to evaluate whether this helps them to fight against the disease.
About 200 cured patients were to be collected in Île-de-France, Grand-Est and Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, while the trial was to include 120 patients in the acute phase of Covid-19: 60 receiving plasma and 60 , a placebo.
But this figure has not yet been reached, explained Karine Lacombe to the deputies. “When we opened this trial, at the beginning of April, we were already in the process of decelerating the epidemic”, with a rapid decline in the number of hospitalized patients.
Furthermore, many of the patients who arrived at the hospital at that time did not meet “the inclusion criteria to benefit from the plasma test”, underlined the head of the infectious diseases department of Saint-Antoine hospital (AP-HP).
“So, currently, we do not have preliminary results as we hoped for the end of April or the beginning of May”, she added, when questioned by the deputies of the commission of inquiry on the management of the coronavirus crisis.
“A criminal act”
In addition to the nine Ile-de-France hospitals that may include patients in the study, two centers will be added, in Mayotte and “in Cayenne, Guyana, where we see that the epidemic is raging and that the peak of the epidemic will probably not be reached before the end of July”, announced Professor Lacombe.
In Guyana, voices are already raised against this essay. On Facebook, Jean-Victor Castor, from the Decolonization and Social Emancipation Movement (MDES), denounces a “scandal and a criminal act”, calling for “general mobilization”, so that there is “not a single test on an inhabitant”.
GDR MP Gabriel Serville for his part criticized on Twitter the Regional Health Agency which “waiting to make guianese patients guinea pigs”.
In a letter to the Minister of Health Olivier Véran, Senator LREM Antoine Karam believes that “the worrying advance of the epidemic (…) cannot, however, make Guyana a playground where researchers from France, however brilliant they may be, would come as they see fit to continue their work”.
He claims that “The installation of such a center is the subject of a discussion with the Guyanese elected officials in order to jointly assess its advantages, its risks and its limits”.
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