Tocilizumab in Covid-19

Abstract

Stone et al. (Dec. 10 issue)¹ report that tocilizumab had no significant effect on the risk of intubation or death in moderately ill patients hospitalized with coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). These results should not be extrapolated to other populations of patients with Covid-19, particularly the critically ill. Our multicenter cohort study involving 3924 critically ill patients with Covid-19 showed that early administration of tocilizumab was associated with prolonged survival.² The patients enrolled in our study were fundamentally different from those in the trial by Stone et al. ( Figure 1 ), which may account for the divergent findings.