A review of possible therapeutic agents for COVID-19 pandemic

The epidemic of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome, coronavirus 2) infection has been consid-ered by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a public health emergency of global inter-est. The efforts nowadays of different countries focus on the fast isolation and fast diagnosis of patients as well as to find possible therapeutic agent or vaccine. Several sites, articles, re-ports, reviews, and web pages discussing COVID-19 virus and possible treatments were in-vestigated, the data were collected between November-2020 and May-2021. Approximately 170 articles and reports were opened and read, but nearly 80 of them were used for this re-view. Several drugs showed hopeful potential results such as colchicine, dexamethasone, kaletra (Lopinavir/ritonavir), cefuroxime, favipiravir, and inhaled furosemide, but until now there is no WHO approved antiviral drug against COVID-19, although remdesivir is approved by Food and drug administration (FDA) as antiviral for COVID-19, but WHO doesn’t rec-ommend it’s use. The protocol followed by WHO until now is a symptomatic treatment, e.g., antipyretics, antitussive, adequate nutrition, and rehydration, antibiotics if suffering from secondary infection, antithrombotic prophylaxis for hospitalized COVID-19 patients, and corticosteroids in exacerbation cases. Fortunately, there are several vaccines that reached an advanced phase in research trials, and the world is hopeful for mass vaccination in early to mid-2021. Currently, there is no WHO-approved treatment for COVID-19, but there are many other promising drugs/agents under investigation. Supportive care and protocols were followed to manage the current crisis situation. However, many vaccines are approved for the prevention of COVID-19 available now such as Vaxzevria (Astrazeneca vaccine), tozinam-eran (Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine), Moderna: mRNA-1273 vaccine and Janssen COVID-19 vaccine while others are still in clinical trials.