COVID‐19 & allogeneic transplant: Activity and preventive measures for best outcomes in China

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic poses a great challenge to all aspects of medical activities, including haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). To minimize the risk of infection in transplantation, we focused on preventive measures and strict screening in each section of transplantation, involving healthy donors, recipients, caregivers and medical workers. Due to the effective preventive work, our transplantation activity was not interrupted. In our centre, haploidentical donors are preferred over unrelated donors for reducing the uncertainty of COVID-19 on the provision of stem cells, and graft compositions are advocated as fresh peripheral blood stem cells. We especially promoted telemedicine and avoided unnecessary clinic visits in the regular follow-up after transplantation. Here, we describe the detailed preventive measures used during the outbreak of COVID-19 in our centre to provide other countries with experience in transplantation.