Science

Garret A. FitzGerald

As pandemic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to accelerate, French Health Minister, Olivier Véran has confused matters by claiming on Twitter that anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen or cortisone could aggravate the infection. However, scientific evidence does not indicate that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) consumption puts patients who otherwise might have mild or asymptomatic infection by severe acute respiratory syndrome–coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)—the virus that causes COVID-19—at risk of more severe disease. People taking NSAIDs for other reasons should not stop doing so for fear of increasing their COVID-19 risk.