Natural Sourced Traditional Indian and Chinese Medicines to Combat COVID-19

The corona virus disease (COVID-19) was started in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. It is caused by a novel strain of severe acute respiratory syndrome corona viruses (SARS-CoV-2) that has become pandemic on March 11, 2020 and endangered the existence of human beings on the earth as the infection has been spreading in mass population day by day within a few months with a high killing rate. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed the modern health care system of developing and developed countries to their limits for its effective management and control since the drug discovery process is a long journey and challenging task and there is no specific small molecule chemotherapeutics to combat this novel coronavirus. Hence, the existence of human life is a great challenge. Mother Nature has played an important role to combat many pandemics that arrived in past centuries in absence of modern medicines. Nature has been a source of many natural drugs derived from plants' secondary metabolites which may be used to combat COVID-19. Natural sourced traditional Indian and Chinese medicines alternative therapy should be prioritized in combination with modern medicines to combat COVID-19. With rising COVID-19 cases globally, it would be too difficult to provide proper treatment even for the severe cases in hospitals. Therefore, the general public is advised to wear the mask, maintain social distancing, and use sanitizers. The COVID-19 mild infected patients may be isolated at home and can be taken care of by natural medicines. In this chapter, an attempt has been made to repurpose all potential natural drugs and natural Ayurvedic formulations that may be beneficial to combat viruses like the SARS-CoV-2, due to their antiviral and immune-modulator properties available under Indian traditional medicine and Chinese traditional medicine system for the effective treatment or prevention of COVID-19

Keywords: COVID-19, Drug repurposing, Natural formulations, Traditional Chinese medicines (TCM), Traditional Indian medicines (TIM)