A Comprehensive Review on Potential and Prospects of Traditional Medicinal Plants for Management of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)

Abstract

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has emerged as the most devastating global health crisis since 1918, the era of the influenza pandemic. This outbreak was triggered by the coronavirus SARSCoV-2 that measures less than a millionth of an inch but has sent chills all across the globe. The obnoxious disease first became an epidemic in late December 2019 in Wuhan, China, that aggressively spread to the entire world, causing WHO to announce it as a global pandemic. Several features of the disease were uniformly found worldwide, including the consequential symptoms - difficult breathing or shortness of breath, acute hypoxemic respiratory failure, extreme level of fatigue, chest pain, and /or multi-organ failure leading to death. As of August 2022, the present prevalence of the disease is with a daily positivity rate of 2.71 per cent. An estimated 6 million deaths have been recorded worldwide. With no promising vaccines since its outbreak, and no control over this holocaust even after robust global mass vaccination efforts (vaccine boosters), people turned to indigenous methods, especially medicinal plants, as a lookout for immunization against the disease. According to the latest developments, herbal plants like Ocimum and Azadirachta have acted as promising plants. This review article highlights how few traditional medicinal plants can help create (on a mass scale) vaccines against the deadly coronavirus. We have identified ten significant plants based on the Indian traditional knowledge system and summarized their role in combating the disease. The study also focuses on the modifications of the active constituent from these plants and the underlying processes which can be coaxed together to find a better, reliable cure for the pandemic.