'99% COVID patients won't need antibody cocktail, it is not a solution', confirm doctors

Amid looming Omicron scare and spiralling COVID-19 cases nationwide, doctors across Kolkata have asserted that antibody cocktail is not required as the formula is not effective on the WHO-acclaimed 'variant of concern'. In addition, a medical practitioner, in a conversation with ANI, said that people with comorbidities in their initial 5 days of coronavirus infection may be helped by the antibody cocktail.

Dr Abhijit Chowdhary of SSKM Hospital said, "Antibody cocktails are only useful for a small segment of people. For most of the people with COVID-19 or almost 99% of the patients will not need an antibody cocktail. Only patients above 60 years or the ones who have comorbidities in their initial 4-5 days of the initial diseases may help from antibody cocktail. Antibody cocktail is not going to be a great solution for the COVID-19 pandemic."

On the other hand, Dr Kunal Sarkar of Medical Superspeciality Hospital emphasised adequate data of the 'highly transmissible' Omicron variant. He said, "We are still in a decision-making dilemma since we do not know what proportion is Omicron and what proportion is Delta variant. If you presume it is delta then you may have some use. If you presume it is Omicron then an antibody cocktail will not be useful. As doctors, we request the government to come up with more substantial data because we need to know the proportions of Omicron cases. We need to have the trend of infections in each city too."

COVID-19 status in West Bengal 

On Tuesday, the state reported 9,073 fresh Covid-19 infections, an increase of over 49.27% in a single day, with Kolkata accounting for over half of them, the state health department said in a bulletin. The state logged 16 fresh fatalities that pushed the death toll to 19,810. The tally went up to 16,64,301 as of Tuesday.

Of the new positive cases, Kolkata recorded 4,759, up from 1,958 registered on the previous day, the bulletin said.

The metropolis accounted for five fresh fatalities, while neighbouring North 24 Parganas district reported three, it added.

In the last 24 hours, 3,768 coronavirus patients recovered from the disease in the state, taking the number of cured people to 16,19,016. The number of active cases shot up by 5,289 since Monday, to 25,475.