Opportune Safety and Efficacy Information for Therapies Intended for COVID-19: Balancing Evidence and Expectations in an Emergency Context

Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak has not only caused hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide. It has also produced an accelerate and a notable increase in information about treatments that, in most cases, become rapidly outdated. The urgent need for effective therapies for COVID-19 prompted some regulatory bodies to allow the compassionate use of medicines authorized or in development for other indications with no sound-based evidence. The findings reported in some papers are widely discussed in mass media, despite their very preliminary nature and low methodological quality, and some politic leaders have announced some drugs as effective.