In the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, physicians and researchers scrambled to find drugs that might help COVID-19 patients based on their knowledge of drugs’ mechanisms, preliminary results from laboratory studies, and their emerging understanding of the disease. Dozens of treatments were tried within weeks and many of these treatments looked very promising as large proportions of patients improved on them.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global threat that has claimed over 2.16 million lives as of the end of January of 2021 (1). In the majority of individuals, SARS-CoV-2 infection causes mild to moderate flu-like respiratory symptoms and patients recover well.