Different Antiviral Drugs against COVID-19 and Future Perspective

The outbreak of coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) across the world has caused serious health issues in terms of physical and psychological damage to human health. The spread of this virus was rapid and shortly spread to almost every country in the world. Due to the high infection rate and occurrence of complications in the infected individuals, the research and development of anti- COVID-19 drugs became the utmost necessity of time as no specific drug is available to relieve the clinical symptoms of COVID-19. We reviewed reliable information on targeted severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) candidate drugs in the present chapter. Also, we summarized novel insight into the future development of safe, effective, and less-toxic antiviral drugs available and employed for the management of COVID-19. Similarly, we focused on antiviral medications under investigation for this purpose; several medications with different mechanisms of action were noticed for the treatment of COVID-19.

Keywords: COVID-19, Drug repurposing, Hydroxychloroquine, Remdesivir, Umifenovir.