Secondary Publication: COVID-19 Pandemic: Drug Development and Treatment

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), emerged in late 2019. It has been rapidly spreading worldwide ever since. The majority of COVID-19 infections are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic. However, old age or comorbidities can result in a cytokine storm, which eventually leads to death. To date, no drug has been clinically proven effective to treat COVID-19, and development of effective drugs against SARS-CoV-2 is urgently required. Several drugs used in treating other diseases are being evaluated. Clinical trials on many new antiviral drugs and vaccine candidates are also rapidly ongoing. In this review, we summarized the currently used drugs and newly developed vaccines for the treatment of COVID-19. This is a secondary publication of "COVID-19 Pandemic: Drug Development and Drug Treatment" published in the Journal of Tokyo Women's Medical University (in Japanese) 91 (1): 19-28, 2021.

Keywords

• covid-19
• sars-cov-2
• drug development
• covid-19 treatment
• vaccine