Are patients with asthma at a higher risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2 and are they also more likely to experience a more severe course of COVID-19 illness?

What this means for your clinical practice:

• Ensure patients with asthma are symptomatically well controlled
• Encourage your patients with asthma to ensure they take their asthma medications as prescribed and report any increase in respiratory symptoms promptly
• Ensure patients prescribed biologic therapy for asthma continue to receive their medication
  • Consider training patients to self-administer their biologic therapy at home if shielding or hospital visits are not considered appropriate under the National situation
• Oral steroids should be used for the treatment of moderate to severe asthma exacerbations not responding adequately to bronchodilator therapy
• Support your patients with asthma to follow National guidelines, including shielding, in order to minimise their risk of becoming infected with COVID-19
• When seeing patients face to face, follow National guidelines to minimise cross-infection

For additional information on the treatment of an acutely unwell person with COVID 19 in the primary care setting please see our guidance at: https://www.ipcrg.org/ICEQ21

With grateful thanks to Dr Dhiraj Agarwal (KEM Hospital Research Centre Pune, Pune, India) for and on behalf of the IPCRG practice driven answers review group.