existing drugs as treatment options for covid-19: a brief survey of some recent results

the novel coronavirus, namely sars-cov-2, emerged from central china in december 2019 and then spread rapidly worldwide. it has infected hundreds of thousands of people and killed several thousand thus far. the illness caused by this coronavirus is called covid-19 and has been declared a global emergency by the world health organization (who) on january 30, 2020. although a series of existing drugs have shown some promise in treating covid-19, there is currently no approved medication that treat this disease. in this focus-review, we aim to summarize the available literature on the potential usefulness of existing drugs against covid-19.