HYDERABAD: A 45-year-old woman died from complications caused by coronavirus infection at the isolation ward for Covid-19 in the Liaquat University Hospital (LUH) on Friday, raising death toll so far from the virus to 18 in the district since the outbreak of the pandemic.

The hospital’s focal person for Covid-19 Dr Aftab Hussain Phull said the patient was in a critical condition. She was shifted from Hala town in Matiari district to the hospital on May 12 and kept in high dependency unit (HDU) where she breathed her last, he said.

Plasma therapy

Meanwhile, a 62-year-old patient of coronavirus was administered plasma at the hospital’s HDU and her condition was stable, said Dr Phull.

He said that according to Dr Tahir Shamsi, who advocated plasma therapy for critically ill Covid-19 patients, if a patient whose condition necessitated putting him or her on ventilator was administered the plasma in time he or she started showing signs of improvement and did not need vent support.

He said that within next 10 days of the plasma administration, there were maximum chances that the patient’s lab reports would not show coronavirus symptoms. “The patients’ reports also become negative in 14 to 15 days,” he said.

He said that under medical ethics, name of the patient on clinical trial was not to be disclosed and his or her identity was protected.

DADU: Two healthcare officials at the Syed Abdullah Shah Institute of Health Sciences, Sehwan, tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday.

The institute’s director Dr Moeenuddin Siddiqi confirmed that a male nurse and a supervisor of vaccination staff had tested positive for the virus. Both had been quarantined, he said.

He said that samples of 70 relatives and contacts of the two patients had been collected for tests. There were a total of three Covid-19 cases in Sehwan, he said.

Published in Dawn, May 16th, 2020