A Review of Clinical Management Practice of COVID-19 in South Asian Countries: Systematic Review

Our world is currently fighting with highly infectious and deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 virus which has no specific remedy yet. No study focused on reviewing applied clinical management and treatment protocol of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) by health ministry of different nations till date. Therefore, this study focuses to identify and compare clinical management and treatment protocol guidelines for COVID-19 from 8 South Asian countries. This study will assist the healthcare workers and authorities of different nations by sharing the key information from potential guidelines to treat COVID-19 patients. Necessary information has been collected from the clinical management guidelines for COVID-19 in Health Ministry website of India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, and Maldives. Though clinical management practices vary from country to country, all of these countries are utilizing high flow oxygen therapy and mechanical ventilation for critical cases. Moreover, some potential drugs have been suggested for treatment by most of the countries but were not recommended yet as all of them are under clinical trials. Hydroxychloroquine has been suggested by most of these countries. All the countries are developing and updating their guidelines for clinical management of COVID-19 patients. It is worth mentioning that the recovery rate of Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, and Maldives is 63.52%, 76.24%, 94.88%, 94.47%, 83.65%, 71.5%, 71.14%, and 83.83% respectively. The oxygen therapy and empirical antibiotic for preventing secondary infection have been used commonly in most of these countries as an effective treatment.