Covid-19 treatment: India to test 4 Ayurvedic drugs within a week, says minister

India is working on four traditional medicines to treat coronavirus infection and the trials will start within a week, Union Minister of State for AYUSH Shripad Y Naik tweeted.

"The @moayush & the @CSIR_IND are working together on validating four Ayush formulations against #COVID19Pandemic and the trials will start within one week. These formulations will be tried as an add-on therapy and standard care for COVID-19 patients,"Shripad Y Naik said in a tweet.

These four candidates are -- Ashwagandha, Yashtimadhu (Mulethi), Guduchi Pippali (Giloy) and AYUSH-64, which was invented for the treatment of malaria and its repurposing is going on

The government will conduct a randomised controlled clinical trial to assess the efficacy of Ayurvedic drug Ashwagandha as a preventive intervention among healthcare professionals and high-risk coronavirus population. This will be a joint initiative of the ministries of AYUSH, health, and science and technology through the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) with technical support from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).

"I am sure and quite hopeful that, our traditional medicinal system will show the way to overcome this Pandemics," Naik tweeted.

Earlier on May 7, CSIR Director-General Shekhar Mande had said, "There has been a long-felt need for many of the Ayurvedic formulations. We should actually try from modern science perspective so that we get the acceptability."

Mande said that Ayurveda is based on thousands of years of clinical practices that have been followed.

"So, we trust Ayurveda. We are not able to show the mechanism of action like modern medicine does. Ayurvedic practices have existed much before modern medicine practices come. Therefore, it is important that we validate some of the Ayurvedic principles. So, the time is absolutely right that in the fight against coronavirus. We try some of the Ayurvedic formulations against coronavirus," he said.

Meanwhile, the total number of coronavirus patients in the country increased to 78,003, according to the data released by Union Ministry of Health. The number of COVID-19 related deaths in India rose to 2,549.