COMPREHENSIVE THERAPEUTIC INTERVENTIONS AGAINST SARS-COV-2: A REVIEW AND PROSPECTIVE

Abstract

In December 2019, Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, first reported pneumonia like symptoms with unknown aetiology caused by a novel coronavirus. The novel coronavirus was renamed as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) by Coronaviridae Study Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses and the disease was termed as Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). As of 19 August, 2022, the infection has reached above 220 countries, areas or territories with a total of 591 683 619 confirmed cases and 6 443 306 deaths, as published by the World Health Organization (WHO). SARS-CoV-2 is strongly contagious as it has R0, 2.2-2.6, in comparison to SARS-CoV (<1) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) (1.4-2.5), respectively. SARS-CoV-2 might become less virulent than the SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, with the currently analyzed mortality of COVID-19 is 3.4%. The original SARS-CoV-2 has undergone “virus evolution” with the occurrence of numerous variants such as Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta etc. Recently, the circulating variant of concern is Omicron subvariants. Currently, real-time reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction-based detection of the viral genome (RNA) is the gold standard for diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 infection. At present, Remdesivir (RDV) and Baricitinib drugs as well as vaccines Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have been approved for the treatment of COVID-19 by Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In this review, we summarized the existing state of knowledge on approved antiviral therapy, combination therapy, blood-derived therapeutics and immunomodulators to treat COVID-19 pandemic.