processed from the plasma collected from recovered patients which contains a large amount of protective antibodies so far a total of 11 severe patients from several hospitals in wuhan have received the convalescent plasma therapy with all their clinical indicators getting better and no obvious adverse reactions clinical studies on the stem cell therapy which can inhibit the overreaction of the bodys immune system have also been carried out to treat severe patients zhang said a cause of death for severe and critically ill patients infected with the covid19 is cytokine storm which is an overreaction of the immune system said zhou qi an academician with the chinese academy of sciences cas we are also searching for existing drugs that can curb the appearance of cytokine storm including drugs against rheumatism some of the drugs that are proven effective at the cellular level have been applied in clinical trials zhou said at a press conference a trial has been conducted on 14 severe or critically ill patients aged up to 82 in an affiliated hospital of the university of the cas and the results appeared encouraging he said now a multicentre randomised parallelgroup clinical trial is underway if the initial results show a drug is effective we may speed up the process and provide severe patients with effective treatments as soon as possible he added