Integration of Complementary and Alternative Medicines in Health care system to combat COVID 19- A Validation

Human mankind has always been under the wrath of various epidemics viz. Spanish Flu, Asian Flu, Hong Kong Flu, influenza A-H1N1 virus, SARS in 2003, etc. The on-going COVID 19 pandemic has posed as a serious concern to humans with no proper treatment and no specific drugs against this virus. There have been various challenges to the current health care delivery system. There is dearth of reported RCTs evaluating effects of antivirals. Corticosteroid treatment has reported to have delayed coronavirus RNA clearance with its widespread use leading to development/exacerbation of fungal diseases like Mucormycosis. Various vaccines designed have many questions about their efficacy that may rise with time, as SARS-CoV-2 has numerous variants, and it can mutate over time. With limited success in developing antivirals, Complementary and Alternative medicines like Traditional Chinese medicines, Ayurvedic and homoeopathic medicines have been gaining momentums in recent years displaying promising results. Methodical researches are warranted to further evaluate the efficacy of Complementary and alternative medicines. For curtailing the devastating effects of COVID 19 requires reviewing the current health policies by integrating complementary medicine with conventional system. To channelize all the available therapeutic options to win the battle against COVID-19 is the need of hour.