ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: For the past few months, HMOs have faced crowded emergency rooms and insufficient hospital and intensive-care-unit beds, all from the worst pandemic of this century, COVID-19. METHODS: In a large HMO in Brazil, our approach was to allow treating physicians to prescribe antiviral medications immediately at presentation, and prednisone starting on day-6 of symptoms to treat pulmonary inflammation. We implemented this COVID-19 protocol for outpatients and studied 717 consecutive SARS-CoV-2-positive patients age 40 years or older presenting at our emergency rooms. RESULTS: Use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), prednisone or both significantly reduced hospitalization risk by 50-60%. Ivermectin, azithromycin and oseltamivir did not substantially reduce risk further. Hospitalization risk was doubled for people with type-2 diabetes or obesity, increased by two-thirds for people with heart disease, and by 75% for each decade of age over age 40. Similar magnitudes of reduced risk with HCQ and prednisone use were seen for mortality risk, though were not significant because of only 11 deaths among the 717 patients. No cardiac arrhythmias requiring medication termination were observed for any of the medications. CONCLUSIONS: This work adds to the growing literature of studies that have found substantial benefit for use of HCQ combined with other agents in the early outpatient treatment of COVID-19, and adds the possibility of steroid use to enhance treatment efficacy.
