Usually, after a person undergoes an organ transplant, they may be given immunosuppressants in order that the body’s immune system does not reject the new organ. Understandably, diminished immunity is a risk factor during the pandemic. This is one of the reasons that doctors had been anxious about carrying out transplants in 2020, especially in the initial 8 months or so. “Even if we wanted to save the life of a patient, we were not sure if we should ask a healthy person (donor) to come to the hospital, be operated on, and then stay in the hospital for recovery,” Dr. Elan says.  However, some other problem remained: the paucity of cadaveric donors. When someone is declared brain dead, there is an 8-hour window during which their organs may be harvested for donation. COVID-19 hits organ transplants in India

During this pandemic, even supposing the deceased person doesn’t have COVID-19 and is an eligible donor. The family could be worried about taking the body back to their hometown, getting permission, etc due to Covid-19. It has become very difficult to convince them. If a patient doesn’t have any potential relative or own circle of relatives who may be a living donor (in case of liver, kidney transplants), the wait for cadaveric donors has become long. In the case of lung transplants, there’s a further hurdle because COVID-19 is a respiration disease. Deceased people who could have recovered from COVID-19 but are found to have scarring or residual changes in the CT test can’t be donors, factors out Dr. Vijil Rahulan K, Additional Director on the Health Lung Transplant Institute at KIMS Hospital, Secunderabad in Telangana. Further, even in instances in which there is a living donor, if they may be found to have COVID-19 during the pre-transplant screening, the surgical procedure would be not on time until the donor recovers and tests negative, even if they may be asymptomatic. This additionally applies to donors who have an active infection.   Unlike lung, coronary heart, or liver, kidney transplants may be delayed significantly even if the organ fails, through keeping the affected person on dialysis. However, Dr. Balasubramaniyam notes that while this can lower the danger of COVID-19 infection, the most important fallout is cost. “Patients have restrained assets. So, say, if an affected person decides to continue with dialysis in hopes of doing a transplant while it’s safer, they’ll not truly have the resources left to finance the transplant itself after a while,” he explains.