Current Status of Treatment Options, Clinical Trials, and Vaccine Development for SARS-CoV-2 Infection
vaccine, Supportive care, Clinical trials, SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19
The severe acute respiratory syndrome virus (SARS-CoV-2), a novel coronavirus first discovered inWuhan, China in December 2019 causes the Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19), which presents with a wide range of clinical symptoms from mild or moderate to severe and critical illnesses. With thecontinuing transmission of the virus worldwide and the rapidly evolving situation globally, the WorldHealth Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic in March. Currently, thereis no proven specific treatment for this potentially deadly disease beyond supportive care. However,a massive effort has been put globally into the investigation of medications and other interventionalmeasures to fight COVID-19. Convalescent plasma therapy from recovered patients has recently drawnconsiderable interest. Several alternative medical treatments, although evidence of their efficacy stilllacking, have also gained popularity, especially in countries with such traditions such as India and China.Rapid repurposing of drugs for COVID-19 has revealed a few promising candidate antiviral agents, butfurther research, especially high quality randomized controlled trials, will be needed to prove theirefficacy and safety in the clinical use to treat COVID-19. Vaccine development has been the imperativetask in the battle against SARS-CoV-2. While clinical trials have been launched for several candidatevaccines, research on COVID-19 vaccines is still at an early stage. So far, optimized supportive careremains the best practice against COVID-19.
Yuhong Yang, Ran Jing, Ramarao Vunnam, Adam Karevoll, Srinivas Rao Vunnam
Journal of Pure and Applied Microbiology