Abstract
An epidemic of extreme respiratory deterrence, pneumonia and shortness of breath, the SARS-CoV-2 viral infection began in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China in December 2019, and rapidly spread across China and beyond, with human to human transmission. On February 12, 2020, World Health Organization officially named the new coronavirus disease as coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19). Most COVID-19 patients were diagnosed with pneumonia and many were treated using Chinese medicines and other secondary therapies. As of April 22, 2020, the total figure of infected patients has crossed 2.6 million people worldwide with over 180,000 deaths and 700,000 patients that have recovered. Preliminary reports suggest that certain drugs, such as chloroquine and antiviral nucleotide analogues such as remdesivir, which inhibit viral replication, can target the new coronavirus, although their usefulness in the clinic is still under debate. An expert US committee developed the US NIH guidelines for COVID-19 treatment, which was just released and will be regularly updated. This manuscript reviews the epidemiology, etiology, mortality, COVID-19 clinical symptoms, and potential therapeutic drugs, while highlighting the seriousness and damage-induced by SARS-CoV-2.
Highlights
In December 2019, Wuhan in the Hubei province of China announced an active epidemic of pneumonia associated with a novel coronavirus, identified as the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)[1,2]
HIV protease inhibitors as potent antiviral against the SARS-CoV-2 Lopinavir and Ritonavir are both HIV protease inhibitors that suppress the cleavage of a polyprotein into multiple functional proteins
Drugs under clinical trials for COVID-19 Clinical trials presently focus on the efficacy of different drugs, such as immunoglobulins, arbidol hydrochloride combined with interferon atomization, ritonavir plus oseltamivir, ASC09F plus oseltamivir, mesenchymal stem cell treatment, lopinavir plus ritonavir, hydroxychloroquine, darunavir plus cobicistat, methylprednisolone and washed microbiota transplantation[65, 77]
Summary
In December 2019, Wuhan in the Hubei province of China announced an active epidemic of pneumonia associated with a novel coronavirus, identified as the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)[1,2]. Coronaviruses have enveloped, positive sense single-stranded RNA genome, infecting humans and a wide range of animals. They were for the first time characterized and cultured by Tyrell and Bynoe in 1966, from patients with flu and common cold[7]. SARS-CoV-2 virus belongs to the genus beta-coronavirus[9, 10]. Chinese herbal and traditional medicines were used in 2003 to combat SARS, which was the most severe infectious disease epidemic in China before COVID-1911, 13
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