Express News Service NEW DELHI: A latest study in the US, the UK and Italy has shown that convalescent plasma used indiscriminately for Covid — as it has been in India — might alter the virus allowing escape mutations to dominate. An escape mutation allows SARS-COV-2 to evade antibodies specific to the spike protein which the virus uses to enter human cells. Incidentally, ICMR director general Balaram Bhargava had warned against the random usage of unproven therapy such as convalescent plasma for Covid, saying that such practices put immune pressure on virus to mutate. To investigate the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 in the immune population, scientists co-incubated authentic virus with a highly neutralising plasma from a Covid convalescent patient.