Treatments for the Infection by SARS-CoV-2

Abstract

In late 2019, pneumonia cases from unknown origin were detected in Wuhan, China. The cause was a new coronavirus. The World Health Organization (WHO) named the virus SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 the associated disease. In the first months of 2020, this disease became a pandemic with a high lethality reported. Since then, the search for treatments began. We started by searching among treatments previously approved for human use that were not designed for COVID-19 and were considered to treat this condition. We continued searching on the therapeutics guidelines published by the WHO for the management of infection by SARS-CoV-2. Based on these results, we searched for the literature in PubMed to obtain further evidence on the drugs against SARS-CoV-2. The treatments presented in this chapter are Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, Nitazoxanide, Azithromycin, Molnupiravir, Casirivimab-Imdevimab, Ritonavir-Nirmatrelvir, Ritonavir-Lopinavir, Remdesivir, and Favipiravir. Two years ahead of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a plenty of options for treatment have been investigated. Only a few of them have been shown to be efficient and safe. According to the WHO, Ritonavir-Nirmatrelvir outperforms other proposed therapeutics.