To check the transmission of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) standard public health interventions like isolation of cases and tracing of contacts are being recommended. However, Joel Hellewell and colleagues predict that this could reduce the overall size of an outbreak, but will be unable to control the outbreak of COVID-19 when the basic reproduction number (R0) is higher than 1·5 or the proportion of contacts traced is lower than 80%.

The current COVID-19 emergency warrants the urgent development of potential strategies to protect people at high risk of infection and close contact. 

 Pre-exposure prophylaxis and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) with antimicrobial drugs can prevent illness before potential exposure or after documented exposure to various microbial pathogens, and reduce the risk of secondary spread of infection. Thus PEP must be started immediately after recent possible exposure to SARS-CoV-2. 

It will help not only to reduce infectiousness to others but will also reduce their risk of becoming infected.

But this implementation of antiviral treatment and prophylaxis demands prior workups like an adequate stockpile of drugs, high safety and low costs. 

An ongoing multicentre randomised controlled trial (NCT04304053) is evaluating the efficacy of antiviral treatment in individuals found to be infected. Further, the efficacy of prophylactic hydroxychloroquine is also been assessed in preventing secondary SARS-CoV-2 infections and disease symptoms among all contacts. 

Source- The Lancet, 2020; 8(5): E639-E640. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30114-5