The Food and Drug Administration has updated its guidelines for the use of convalescent plasma taken from patients who have recovered from the coronavirus as new studies suggest that the use of the treatment may have led to evolving mutations of the virus.
The new usage guidelines recommends only using convalescent plasma to hospitalized patients early in the progression of the disease and other hospitalized patients with conditions that inhibit the body’s natural ability to produce antibodies.
According to National Geographic, the use of convalescent plasma and other therapies may have been “pressured the virus to evolve” as a survival measure. NatGeo reports that a new mutation of the virus are reported on average every eleven days, but in many cases, the variant dies off because the mutation was unhelpful to the virus’s survival.