Abstract
The year 2020 taught us so much in such little time.
Things moved really fast. WHO was informed on 31
December 2019 of cases of pneumonia of unknown
1
aetiology in Wuhan city, Hubei Province, China.
After one week, a novel coronavirus was officially
announced as the causative agent and the viral
2
genome sequence was released. Designated as the
severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
(SARS-CoV-2), by the internal committee on the
taxonomy of viruses (ICTV), on 11 Feb 2020, it had
3
already spread to 213 countries by middle of the year.
th 4 The WHO declared it a pandemic on 11 Mar 2020. .
The immediate Herculean task ahead was to save the
people of the world from death or the severe form of
the disease. To handle a pandemic three things are
required, i.e. specific treatment, an effective vaccine
and public behavior. There are to date no specific
antiviral drugs for the SARS-CoV-2, so a number of
other therapeutic agents have been used, as 'repurpose' drugs. These included hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, remdesivir, ivermectin
and steroids with variable success
