The ASP group developed treatment guidelines provided to Michigan Medicine physicians in mid-March that identified tocilizumab as a potentially beneficial therapy for the most severely ill COVID-19 patients. Those guidelines also pointed out its risks and the lack of evidence for its use in COVID-19, and recommended a dose of 8 milligrams per kilogram.
This led some physicians to choose to use it, while others did not—setting the stage inadvertently for a natural comparison. snip Pogue notes that a single dose of tocilizumab is roughly 100 times more expensive than a course of dexamethasone. ( which reduces Covid-19 ventilator deaths by 20%)
