Repurposed Drugs And Treatments May Help Scientists In The Fight Against Covid-19

Work on similar viruses is giving researchers clues to develop drugs against the disease

- Dr. Kaycee Reyes

What day number is it since the quarantine? Have you already lost count, too? As we stay at home and do our part to #FlattenTheCurve, the situation seems to get worse across the globe. As of this writing, 1,348,628 individuals have contracted the disease around the world, because every positive patient can infect three or more individuals even without showing symptoms. As hospitals get overwhelmed, health care workers become outnumbered, and a vaccine not readily available anytime soon, the current situation seems dire. Yet, even if a vaccine will not come around at least early next year (that is already a feat for the scientific community), a combination of existing treatments, immunoenhancers, and antivirals may help. So as we count down the days, stay at home, and hope that infection cases slow down, there may still be a silver lining, after all.

According to the World Health Organization, there is still no vaccine nor treatment approved for Covid-19 at the moment. So as scientists and research institutions are racing against time to create a vaccine, doctors have been trying experimental treatments and interventions.

Here are possible general treatments for Covid-19 and other coronavirus infections gathered by Zhang and Liu (2020) and published in the Medical Journal of Virology.

Nutritional interventions and immunoenhancers