Antiviral treatment of COVID-19

Currently, there is not any specific effective antiviral treatment for COVID-19. Although most of the COVID-19 patients havemild or moderate courses, up to 5%–10% can have severe, potentially life threatening course, there is an urgent need for effective drugs.Optimized supportive care remains the mainstay of therapy. There have been more than 300 clinical trials going on, various antiviraland immunomodulating agents are in various stages of evaluation for COVID-19 in those trials and some of them will be publishedin the next couple of months. Despite the urgent need to find an effective antiviral treatment for COVID-19 through randomizedcontrolled studies, certain agents are being used all over the world based on either in-vitro or extrapolated evidence or observationalstudies. The most frequently used agents both in Turkey and all over the world including chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir, favipiravir and remdesivir will be reviewed here .Nitazoxanide and ivermectin were also included in this review as theyhave recently been reported to have an activity against SARS-CoV-2 in vitro and are licensed for the treatment of some other humaninfections.

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