To the Editor,
We would like to share ideas on “ICU admission rates in Istanbul following the addition of favipiravir to the national COVID-19 treatment protocol” [1]. Guner et al. [1] concluded that “The addition of favipiravir to the national COVID-19 treatment protocol may explain this rapid decrease in the rate of ICU admissions and intubation”. The favipiravir is the new hope for COVID-10 outbreak containment. However, the insufficiency and unavailability are main problems in many developing countries.
The decreased ICU described by Guner et al. [2] might be an effect of favipiravir use. However, it might also be the effect by other factors such as other infectious disease control process, a good supportive treatment, and seasonal fluctuation of disease incidence. Finally, a recent report also showed that an additional use of hydroxychloroquine plus favipiravir can provide a better outcome than favipiravir alone.
Footnotes
Conflict of Interest: No conflict of interest was declared by the authors.
Financial Disclosure: The authors declared that this study has received no financial support.
Authorship Contributions: Concept – RM, VW?; Design – RM, VW; Supervision – RM, VW; Funding – RM, VW; Materials – RM, VW; Data collection and/or processing – RM, VW; Analysis and/or interpretation – RM, VW; Literature review – RM, VW; Writing – RM, VW; Critical review – RM, VW.
REFERENCES
- 1.Guner AE, Surmeli A, Kural K, Yilmaz H, Kocayigit E, Sahin E, et al. ICU admission rates in Istanbul following the addition of favipiravir to the national COVID-19 treatment protocol. North Clin Istanb. 2021;8:119–23. doi: 10.14744/nci.2021.60420. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 2.Guner R, Hasanoglu I, Kayaaslan B, Aypak A, Akinci E, Bodur H, et al. Comparing ICU admission rates of mild/moderate COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine favipiravir, and hydroxychloroquine plus afavipiravir. J Infect Public Health. 2021;14:365–70. doi: 10.1016/j.jiph.2020.12.017. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]