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What's New in the Guidelines

Last Updated: February 29, 2024

In response to the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic, the National Institutes of Health assembled a panel of experts to provide practical recommendations for health care providers and issued the first version of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Treatment Guidelines on April 21, 2020. For close to 4 years, the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel (the Panel) has critically reviewed the growing body of research data on COVID-19 and used that information to develop and revise their recommendations for treating patients with this disease. The Panel has released a total of 72 versions of the Guidelines.

The federal COVID-19 Public Health Emergency ended in May 2023, and several professional societies currently provide COVID-19 treatment guidelines for their medical specialties or subspecialties. Accordingly, this will be the final update of the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines. 

The Panel members hope these Guidelines have been of value to health care providers, and they appreciate the support and input they have received over the past 4 years. 

The COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines website will remain available until August 16, 2024, and will provide a downloadable PDF of the final version of the Guidelines.

February 29, 2024

In preparation for this final version of the Guidelines, the Panel reviewed all the sections that were not updated on December 20, 2023. The information in these sections is current as of February 2024. 

The Viral Rebound and Symptom Recurrence subsections in Therapeutic Management of Nonhospitalized Adults With COVID-19 and Ritonavir-Boosted Nirmatrelvir (Paxlovid) have been updated with new references. The Panel noted that concerns about the recurrence of symptoms or viral rebound should not be a reason to avoid using antiviral therapy when indicated.

The Panel updated the discussion on the role of remdesivir in adults with COVID-19 who require mechanical ventilation or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in Therapeutic Management of Hospitalized Adults With COVID-19.

In Therapeutic Management of Nonhospitalized Children With COVID-19, the vaccination status categories that determine a child’s risk level for progression to severe disease have been changed from “Unvaccinated,” “Primary Series,” and “Up to Date” to “Not Up to Date” and “Up to Date.” Chronic kidney disease and pregnancy were added to the list of risk factors that are associated with progression to severe COVID-19.

Other sections that were reviewed for this final version of the Guidelines can be found in: