Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) technical guidance: Patient management

To view all of WHO’s country and technical guidance on COVID-19 please visit our publications hub

Clinical management COVID-19

This guidance document is intended for clinicians caring for COVID-19 patients during all phases of their disease (i.e. screening to discharge).  This update has been expanded to meet the needs of front-line clinicians and promotes a multi-disciplinary approach to care for patients with COVID-19, including those with mild, moderate, severe, and critical disease. The following sections are entirely new: COVID-19 care pathway, treatment of acute and chronic infections, management of neurological and mental manifestations, noncommunicable diseases, rehabilitation, palliative care, ethical principles, and reporting of death; while previous chapters have also been significantly expanded.

Use of chest imaging in COVID-19. A rapid advice guide

This rapid advice guide examines the evidence and makes recommendations for the use of chest imaging in acute care of adult patients with suspected, probable or confirmed COVID-19. Imaging modalities considered are radiography, computed tomography and ultrasound. This guide addresses the care pathway from presentation of the patient to a health facility to patient discharge. It considers different levels of disease severity, from asymptomatic individuals to critically ill patients. Accounting for variations in the benefits and harms of chest imaging in different situations, remarks are provided to describe the circumstances under which each recommendation would benefit patients. The guide also includes implementation considerations for different settings, provides suggestions for impact monitoring and evaluation and identifies knowledge gaps meriting further research.

- Access the guide (11 June 2020)

Clinical care of severe acute respiratory infections – Tool kit

This toolkit is intended for clinicians working in acute care hospitals in low- and middle-income countries, managing adult and paediatric patients with acute respiratory infection, including severe pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, sepsis and septic shock. The main objective is to provide some of the necessary tools that can be used to care for the critically ill patient from hospital entry to hospital discharge.

- Access the tool kit (11 April 2020)

Recommendations: Prehospital Emergency Medical Services (EMS) COVID-19

This document provides general guidance for Emergency Medical Service (EMS) preparedness and response to COVID-19 and is directed to EMS providers. Prehospital workers, including EMS personnel and other emergency responders, may potentially be exposed to the disease through patient contact or through contaminated environments. It is paramount that providers follow specific practice guidelines to mitigate the effects of an escalating pandemic.

- Access the recommendations publication (28 March 2020)

Severe Acute Respiratory Infections Treatment Centre 

Practical manual to set up and manage a SARI treatment centre and a SARI screening

Considerations for quarantine of individuals in the context of containment for coronavirus disease (COVID-19)

The purpose of this document is to offer guidance to Member States on quarantine measures for individuals in the context of COVID-19. It is intended for those responsible for establishing local or national policy for quarantine of individuals, and adherence to infection prevention and control measures. 

- Access the guidance publication (19 March 2020)

Home care for patients with suspected novel coronavirus (nCoV) infection presenting with mild symptoms and management of contacts

- Access the home care advice document (17 March 2020)

Operational considerations for case management of COVID-19 in health facility and community

This document is intended to guide the care of COVID-19 patients as the response capacity of health systems is challenged; to ensure that COVID-19 patients can access life-saving treatment, without compromising public health objectives and safety of health workers.

It promotes two key messages: 

1. Key public health interventions regardless of transmission scenario; and 

2. Key action steps to be taken by transmission scenario to enable timely surge of clinical operations.

- Access the patient care publication (18 March 2020)

Maintaining a safe and adequate blood supply during the pandemic outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) 

This document provides interim guidance on the management of the blood supply in response to the pandemic outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19). It emphasizes the importance of being prepared and responding quickly and outlines key actions and measures that the blood services should take to mitigate the potential risk to the safety and sufficiency of the blood supplies during the pandemic. 

It should be read in conjunction with WHO Guidance for National Blood Services on Protecting the Blood Supply During Infectious Disease Outbreaks, which provides general guidance on the development of national plans to respond to any emerging infectious threats to the sufficiency or safety of the blood supply.

- Access the blood supply document (20 March 2020)

Global COVID-19 Clinical Data Platform for clinical characterization and management of hospitalized patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19

Global understanding of the severity, clinical features and prognostic factors of COVID-19 in different settings and populations remains incomplete. WHO therefore invites Member States, health facilities and other entities to participate in a global effort to collect anonymized clinical data related to hospitalized suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19 and contribute data to the Global COVID-19 Clinical Data Platform. The platform is a secure, limited-access, password-protected platform hosted on OpenClinica.

To harmonize data collection across diverse global settings, WHO has developed standard case report forms (CRFs) which contains a minimum set of key variables and forms the basis of three types of CRFs: (1) core rapid CRF for adults and children; (2) CRF for pregnant women; and (3)  CRF for multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS) in children and adolescents temporally related to COVID-19.

For more information on the Clinical Data Platform, and to download the CRFs, please visit: https://www.who.int/teams/health-care-readiness-clinical-unit/covid-19/data-platform/

To contribute anonymized clinical data to the Global COVID-19 Clinical Data Platform and obtain log-in credentials, please register here: https://www.who.int/teams/health-care-readiness-clinical-unit/covid-19/data-platform/form

If you have any questions, please contact COVID_ClinPlatform@who.int.

The clinical characterization case record form (clinical CRF) is intended to provide member states with a standardized approach to collect clinical data in order to better understand the natural history of disease and describe clinical phenotypes and treatment interventions (i.e. clinical characterization).  By using one standardized clinical data tool, there is potential for clinical data from around the world to be aggregated; in order to learn more to inform the public health response and prepare for large scale clinical trials. 

- Access the rapid case record form (16 April 2020)

- Access the pregnancy module of case report form

- Access the case reporting form for multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children and adolescents temporally related to COVID-19

WHO COVID-19 Essential Supplies Forecasting Tool

The WHO COVID-19 Essential Supplies Forecasting Tool (ESFT) is designed to help governments, partners, and other stakeholders to estimate potential requirements for essential supplies to respond to the current pandemic of COVID-19. Although it gives users with an estimation of the number of cases, this calculator is not an epidemiological calculator.  

The focus of this tool is to forecast essential supplies: it includes estimation of personal protective equipment, diagnostic equipment, biomedical equipment for case management, essential drugs for supportive care, and consumable medical supplies.

The COVID-19 ESFT tool is intended to be complimentary to the Health Workforce tools (Adaptt and the Workforce Estimator).  Both tools use the same base clinical attack rate ranges and classify health workforce using ILO ISCO codes, but their outputs are intentionally different due to their primary focus.

- Access the forecasting tool