22 April 2020 - Prescribing medicines with putative benefit for COVID‑19 disease appears very attractive to consumers, clinicians and some senior politicians.

However, there are no medicines with any robust evidence of clinical benefit, including the anti-malarial hydroxychloroquine, the antibiotic azithromycin and the antiretroviral combination of lopinavir with ritonavir. Indeed, now is the time to investigate which drugs may improve clinical outcomes in COVID‑19 by conducting well-designed clinical trials, rather than making assumptions based on preliminary data and low-quality clinical studies.

There are major trials underway in hospital wards and intensive care units, as well as in the community in the USA, Europe and Australia. Each trial will test different drugs or drug combinations, driven by locally available options.

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