Effectiveness and Safety of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Treating COVID-19: Clinical Evidence from China

When the outbreak of COVID-19 occurred in 2020, the Chinese government promptly undertook a series of preventive control and medical treatment measures that have effectively reduced the infection and mortality rates of COVID-19. In the process of preventing COVID-19 transmission and treating COVID-19, the Chinese government actively promotes the use of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), and a series of studies have been carried out to determine the efficacy of TCM for COVID-19. Chinese physicians have accumulated rich experiences and created three Chinese patent medicines (i.e., Lianhua Qingwen Capsule, Jinhua Qinggan Granules, and Xuebijing Injection) and three herbal prescriptions (i.e., Xuanfeibaidu Recipe, Huashi Paidu Recipe, and Qingfei Paidu Decoction), as well as other strategies based on TCM theory to effectively treat COVID-19. Studies have reported that TCM treatment plays a significant role in improving the clinical symptoms, shortening the duration of hospitalization, reducing the overall mortality rate, obtaining favorable treatment outcomes in patients with severe COVID-19, preventing disease progression, improving quality of life and immunity, and reducing the positive rate of viral nucleic acid testing. TCM treatment has a fairly high degree of safety, but the level of evidence needs to be further improved.