Treatment of COVID-19 is critically phase specific

A number of beneficial (corticosteroids and remdesivir), and potentially beneficial therapies, exist for the treatment of COVID-19. What is not widely appreciated is that patients with COVID-19 progress though several distinct phases, with each stage having a different treatment strategy (Figure 1). This fact is of critical importance in achieving the best possible outcomes of this disease. The symptomatic phase is marked by enormous viral replication reaching viral loads in the upper respiratory tract in excess of a billion virions per milliliter, with a very limited host inflammatory response. While patients may remain SARS-CoV-2 PCR positive for weeks (and in…