Research progress in prevention and treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 by traditional Chinese medicine

Since outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) at the end of 2019, hundreds of millions of people were infected and millions of people around the world were killed. SARS-CoV-2 is highly prone to present rapid mutations that can render vaccines ineffective. Drug therapy is currently an effective mean to prevent and treat COVID-19, and traditional Chinese medicine therapy based on clinical characteristics and syndrome differentiation has played an extremely important role in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 in China. Therefore, the characteristics and mechanism of the various prescriptions via multiple approaches and targets used in the treatment of COVID-19, including drugs with functions of heat-clearing, exterior-resolving, aromatic flavor and damp-resolving, and deficiency-tonifying, based on the clinical experience of Chinese traditional medicine in preventing and treating COVID-19, in order to provide reference for the clinical treatment of such diseases with symptomatic prescriptions.