Four years after COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, the National Institutes of Health is sunsetting its COVID-19 treatment guidelines, NPR reported March 19.
The set of guidelines served as a critical reference tool for healthcare professionals around the world who were learning in real time how to treat patients with the infection. It has been accessed more than 50 million times. The set of guidance was last updated in February and archives of the documents will remain available online until Aug. 16, the NIH said in an update published last month.
"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," the agency said. "Accordingly, this will be the final update of the COVID-19 treatment guidelines."
The NIH convened a panel of more than 40 experts early in the pandemic, which met several times per week to review updates in scientific literature and revise official guidance accordingly.
As treatments such as antibodies and Paxlovid emerged and became more available, the group met less frequently, Cliff Lane, MD, co-chair of the panel and director of the clinical research division at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told NPR.
"I don't know that there was a perfect moment [to end it], but ... the frequency of calls that we needed to have began to decrease, and then on occasion we would be canceling one of our regularly scheduled calls," Dr. Lane said. "It's probably six months ago we started talking about — What will be the end? How do we end it in a way that we don't create a void?"
Dr. Lane said treatment guidance will now be overseen by specialty groups such as the American College of Physicians and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.