Tackling COVID-19 Through Ayurveda: A Review on the Herbs of Recommended Indian Remedies

COVID-19 has rapidly spread across the globe and has been declared a pandemic. Presently, drugs or vaccines are unavailable, and patients are treated on symptom management basis. Traditional healthcare can contribute to prevent the infection in healthy individuals as well as in the treatment of infected patients. Ayurveda medicines become even more relevant as there is a descriptive illustration of causation and management of diseases similar to COVID-19 as Janapadodhwamsa. Meanwhile, Ministry of AYUSH, Govt. of India has recommended herbal remedies for prevention of COVID-19 infection. The remedies include 1. Herbal tea twice a day and 2. Golden milk for immunity boosting measures. Further, Steam inhalation and medicated honey is recommended for sore throat. In this review, we have tried to evaluate effectiveness of the recommended Indian remedies in prevention and treatment of COVID-19 conditions with available scientific literature. COVID-19, being primarily a respiratory disease, all 9 herbs of remedies have been selected for analysing their respiratory diseases related immunomodulatory and other activities, anti-viral, antibacterial activities as well as in silico effectiveness of constituents thereof against SARS-CoV-2 targets. The literature search was carried out in electronic databases namely PubMed, ScienceDirect, ACS Publications, Clinicaltrials.gov, Springer, and Google Scholar. The scientific evaluation revealed that the recommended Indian remedies might be useful in tackling COVID-19 situation, though scientific interventional studies are required to establish the claims.