Acute Stroke Care in the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a pandemic respiratory disease with serious public health risk and has taken the world off-guard with its rapid spread. As the COVID-19 pandemic intensifies, overwhelming the healthcare system and the medical community, current practice for the management of acute ischemic stroke (AIS) will require modification, and guidelines should be relaxed while maintaining high standard quality of care. The aim of these suggestions is to avoid contributing to the rapid spread of COVID-19 as well as to conserve what are likely to be very limited resources (including personnel, intensive care/hospital beds as well as physicians) while maintaining high quality care for patients with AIS. We present our recommendations for the management of acute stroke during the COVID-19 pandemics.