“There is a strong desire on the part of several institutions to do so in terms of clinical trials at an early stage,” said António Lacerda Sales at the daily press conference held at the Directorate-General for Health (DGS) to disseminate the epidemiological bulletin of the covid- 19, when asked about the use of plasma from recovered patients.

The Secretary of State affirmed that “DGS, the National Institute of Health Doutor Ricardo Jorge (INSA) and Infarmed (National Authority for Medicines and Health Products) “are incorporated in this will, which are currently analyzing a set of criteria and factors such as informed consent and “technology for neutralizing antibodies”.

"There is a whole technology that has to be evaluated in advance", he stressed, noting that a group will be defined so that it can evaluate and validate the beginning of these clinical trials, which can start in May and with "moderate and severe" patients.

“These clinical trials will start with moderate and severe and not very serious patients as has often been passed on to the public. This will be a little bit of the strategy we will use. We wanted to see if, by the end of the month, we could have all this uniformity perfectly contemplated to start these clinical trials”, he said.