Ajay Srivastava 1, Rajiv Lall 1, Jamil Talukder 1, Dan DuBourdieu 1 and Ramesh C. Gupta 2,*
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first officially diagnosed in the city of Wuhan, China
in January 2020. In reality, the disease was identified in December 2019 in the same city where patients began showing symptoms of pneumonia of unidentified origin. Very soon the disease became a pandemic due to the suppression of information in the country of origin and inadequate testing for the COVID -19 virus. Currently, more than 36 million people have been found positive for this virus and more than one million people have died. There are no signs that COVID -19 is slowing down . This deadly virus affects multiple vital organs (lungs, heart, nervous system, blood, and immune system), yet its exact mechanism of pathophysiology remains obscure.
Depending on the viral load, sick people often show symptoms of fever, cough, shortness of
breath, coagulopathy, cardiac abnormalities, fatigue, and death. Great strides have been made in
COVID -19 testing, thereby allowing timely therapeutic intervention. While vaccine development
and clinical trials are underway, prevention and treatment rest with the anti-malarial drug
hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine. Due to a lack of clinical trial -based efficacy and safety of
hydroxychloroquine, its use remains controversial at present. In such a scenario, nutraceuticals and other phyto-mineral supplements appear to be promising alternative solutions for the prevention and treatment of COVID -19.
