Kansas City: An Indo-American physician, Dhanunjaya Lakkireddy, has launched a four-month study to find out whether prayers could heal COVID-19 patients or not.
The study is focused to investigate the role of remote intercessory multi-denominational prayer on clinical outcomes in COVID-19 patients. It will have a sample size of 1,000 COVID-19 patients who are in critical care units, according to information provided to the National Institutes of Health on Friday.
To conduct the study, the patients will be divided into groups of 500 each, and prayers will be offered to one of the groups without disturbing the standard treatment provided to them.
The patients will then receive a ‘universal’ prayer offered in five denominational forms — Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism — while the other group patients will constitute the control group (i.e. they won’t be exposed to the prayers).
“If there is a supernatural power, which a lot of us believe, would that power of prayer and divine intervention change the outcomes in a concerted fashion. That was our question,” Lakkireddy was quoted as saying by the Indian Express.
After the four-month process, the investigators will assess how long the patients remained on ventilators, how many suffered from organ failure, how quickly they were released from intensive care and how many died, he added.
