Early outpatient treatment of symptomatic, high-risk Covid-19 patients that should be ramped-up immediately as key to the pandemic crisis

As high-risk patients presenting with progressing symptomatic disease have only hospitalization treatment with its high mortality, there is an urgent necessity for an outpatient treatment for SARS-CoV-2 that may aid preventing hospitalization. Following are the widely discussed candidate medications: remdesivir, and hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin. In hospitalized inpatients, Remdesivir has displayed mild effectiveness, but there are no trials registered in outpatients. Irrelevant evidence about use of hydroxychloroquine alone, or of hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin in inpatients, concerning efficacy of the pair in early high-risk outpatient disease has been generated. Significant major outpatient treatment efficacy has been reported in five studies, including two controlled clinical trials. More than 300,000 older adults with multicomorbidities have been treated with hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin as standard-of-care, with estimated proportion diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmias attributable to the medications 47/100,000 users, of which estimated mortality is < 20%, 9/100,000 users, compared with the 10,000 Americans now dying each week. Based on these observations, they suggest making these medications widely available and promoting them immediately for physicians to prescribe.