A letter published this week in The Lancet makes the case that assessments of drug efficacy in preventing COVID-19 and treating uncomplicated COVID-19 should not be based on data pooled with the treatment results of severely ill patients.

The authors – Prof. Nick White, Dr Nathalie Strub-Wourgaft, Prof. Abul Faiz, and Prof. Philippe Guérin, who are all members of the COVID-19 Clinical Research Coalition’s Steering Committee – note that studies to date have found major differences in therapeutic responses according to disease stage. They argue that the evidence therefore does not support generalizing the treatment results of hospitalized patients to mild COVID-19 cases, as has been done in the WHO living guideline on COVID-19 therapeutics.

The authors observe that prevention of hospital admission is a therapeutic priority in low-resource settings, which often have limited facilities for intensive care.

Read the letter