MEDICINAL PLANTS SCREENING IN THE MANAGEMENT OF COVID-19 BASIS ITS MODE OF ACTION – A REVIEW

Flora of India is rich in a variety of species with various potential active ingredients that have been widely used to treat a variety of infectious and non-infectious diseases. A number of medicinal plants have shown promise to treat a number of viral infections, and some of them possess broad-spectrum antiviral activity. In the past, discovery into the antiviral activity of various medicinal plants was limited due to highly infectious nature of viruses and short of suitable separation methods for the screening of antiviral components from plants. In the pandemic spread of Covid-19, search and development of an ideal treatment is very essential and based on the observation with the world wide scenario a search was made to identify medicinal plants with antiviral activities possessing immuno-modulator, RNA viral inhibition, hepatitis viruses, chloroquine derivatives, ACE2 inhibitor etc. Further to enhance its efficacy search of nutritional supplements like Zinc and Vitamin C which are considered to be a main stay in developing a novel drug. An advancement of such approaches, in which noninfectious molecular clone of a virus could be used for antiviral screening purposes, and development in separation technologies offers promise for medicinal plants usage in modern drug discovery. This article describes potential antiviral properties of medicinal plants against a diverse group of viruses, and suggests screening the potential of plants possessing broad-spectrum antiviral effects against emerging Covid-19 infections