Therapeutics and COVID-19: living guideline, 20 November 2020

This living WHO guideline on therapeutics for COVID-19 now includes a conditional recommendation against the use of remdesivir, triggered by results from the WHO SOLIDARITY trial. Recommendations for hydroxychloroquine and lopinavir will follow. The first version of the living WHO guideline (published 2 September 2020) provides recommendations for corticosteroids.

This is a living guideline, so the recommendations included here will be updated, and new recommendations will be added on other therapies for COVID-19. The guideline is therefore written, disseminated and updated in MAGICapp, with a format and structure aiming to make it user-friendly and easy to navigate while accommodating for dynamically updated evidence and recommendations, focusing on what is new while keeping existing recommendations within the guideline.

Please visit the WHO website for the latest version of the guidance, also available in the BMJ as Rapid Recommendations together with the living NMA, a major evidence source for the guidelines.

At the time of publication (20 November 2020), the updated living NMA that informs this recommendation has been made available in the Annex (while undergoing peer review in the BMJ); and the systematic review and meta-analysis of adverse effects from remdesivir is also available as a preprint.