RESUMEN
In January 2020, the novel Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) epidemic spread to Italy. The ensuing high rates of patients with pulmonary disease due to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections, overwhelmed the Italian health services. Management of inpatients was based on World Health Organization (WHO) and other public health bodies’ and specialist societies’ clinical, diagnostic and therapeutic protocols developed with very low-quality evidence base at that time. Over time, management guidelines and protocols were progressively modified and adapted based on the evolving first hand clinical management experience, and the evidence, which has slowly accumulated from clinical large cohort studies and clinical trials. As of August 9th, 2020, there have been 250.103 confirmed COVID-19 cases (with 35.203 deaths) reported from Italy. We present chronological evolution of the clinical and scientific evidence-based management guidelines to date, and their influence on the health care workers management of patients with COVID-19 disease.Funding Statement: This research was supported by funds to National Institute for Infectious Diseases ‘Lazzaro Spallanzani’ IRCCS from Line one-Ricerca Corrente ‘Infezioni Emergenti e Riemergenti’ and by Progetto COVID 2020 12371675 both funded by Italian Ministry of Health and from European Commission – Horizon 2020 (EXSCALATE4CoV).Sir Zumla and Prof Ippolito are co-PIs of the Pan-African Network on Emerging and Re-Emerging Infections (PANDORA-ID-NET – https://www.pandora-id.net/) funded by the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership. Sir Zumla is in receipt of a National Institutes of Health Research senior investigator award.Declaration of Interests: EN received grants from Gilead science for educational purpose. Al other authors have no conflicts of interest to declareEthics Approval Statement: The authors stated that Ethical approval was not required.