Classical Drug and its New Role in COVID-19 Management

Abstract

9 COVID-19 is the new emerging viral infection that already cause global public health problem [1-3]. More than 220 countries/territories are already attacked and there are more than 17 million patients around the world. This disease was firstly reported in China then in Indochina and extended worldwide. The patient can have febrile respiratory illness and there are many asymptomatic and mild symptomatic cases. The new viral respiratory infection causes several medical and non-medical problems and it is a big challenge to be managed. As a new disease, the knowledge on diagnosis and management is limited. At present, there is still no gold standard therapeutic regimen for managing COVID-19. The treatment has to depend on symptomatic and supportive treatment. The high mortality rate of this disease is reported and it leads to the urgent need to find new therapeutic method to manage the infection. The ongoing researches and developments for finding new drug against the pathogenic virus is the hope for success in disease containment [4]. Nevertheless, it usually takes a very long time to find a new drug for management of a new emerging disease. Additionally, COVID-19 is a new viral disease, finding the effective drug is usually difficult. Seeking a new alternative prodrug for further development has to take a long time and it might be in time for managing the present outbreak crisis. Therefore, the ideas for seeking new drug from classic drugs is very interesting.