'Any and every cure for COVID-19': an imminent epidemic of alternative remedies amidst the pandemic?

Abstract

The magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented, causing lots of apprehension among scientists, industry actors, politicians, and the general populace. Adverse health, social and economic effects of the pandemic have triggered an urgency among policy makers to seek an effective panacea. In this commentary, we examine the covert outbreak of a demand for alternative remedies with limited scientific evidence on their effectiveness to manage COVID-19 in Africa. Similar demands have been displayed in previous epidemics, though the ubiquity of social media in this current clime fuels such demands even more. We describe the attendant consequences of this demand surge on ongoing public health efforts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and highlight its future repercussions which may continue to plague health systems beyond the present outbreak. Going forward, governments must be proactive in surveillance of this covert epidemic, actively engage community influencers in knowledge transfer and implement targeted health promotion interventions.