Question 4. Should antibiotics be administered? In our opinion, it might be prudent to consider empiric antibiotic treatment in critically ill patients with pneumonia due to COVID-19 in whom bacterial infection cannot be excluded. This suggestion is based on the fact that bacterial coinfection (a) is common in patients with viral pneumonia and (b) can be associated with a substantial risk of delaying appropriate treatment, thereby potentially increasing mortality. Because of the limited available data on both the microbiologic epidemiology (and the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance) of bacterial superinfections in COVID-19 patients, it is difficult to provide specific pathogen-oriented recommendations. Therefore, pending further studies, we suggest to empirically treat COVID-19 patients according to their clinical syndrome (e.g. community-acquired pneumonia, hospital-acquired pneumonia), choosing the best antimicrobial agent or agents on the basis of local guidelines and local antibiotic susceptibility patterns, with early de-escalation or discontinuation according to microbiology results, whenever available.