COVID-19 and the Use of Natural Products

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a highly infectious disease caused by a new variant of coronavirus which has already spread in more than 150 countries and gained global attention. The absence of efficient and effective medicines towards this disease has indeed aggravated the situation [1]. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus (SARS-CoV) was an extremely contagious virus that caused serious disease and death. This virus has been found to cause human respiratory, enteric, and neurological disorders. This is one of the seven known coronavirus strains, found to inflict human infection and the latest outbreak of coronavirus in 2019 was triggered by the strain called SARS-CoV-2. Other strains include HCoV-NL-63, HCoV-229E, HCoV-OC43, HCoV-HKu1, MERS-CoV, etc. [2,3]. Coronavirus 2019 has quickly spread to the international community originating from Wuhan city, Hubei in China [4]. The exponential growth of this new coronavirus strain has already imposed strict four-tier guidelines in UK. In September 2019, it was first observed in UK. In mid-December, this amounted to almost two-thirds of population in UK [5]. On 30th January 2020, it was first reported in India through a student from Wuhan [13]. The world health organization (WHO) declared corona virus outbreak as a global pandemic on 11th March 2020 [12].