Table 1.

Literature review of COVID-19 clinical trials with antiviral drugs

Antiviral drug	Literature	Findings	Study type
Hydroxychloroquine with or without azithromycin	Cavalcanti et al. [8]	Did not improve clinical status at 15 days for mild-to-moderate COVID-19	Open-label RCT
Remdesivir	Beigel et al. [11]	Shorten the time to recovery for hospitalized patients	Double-blind RCT
	Wang et al. [14]	Was not associated with time to clinical improvement	Double-blind RCT
Ribavirin	Tong et al. [15]	Was not associated with improved negative conversion time/improved mortality rate for severe patients	Retrospective study
Lopinavir–ritonavir (LPV/r)	Cao et al. [16]	Did not significantly accelerate clinical improvement for severe patients	Open-label RCT
Interferon beta-1b + lopinavir–ritonavir + ribavirin	Hung et al. [17]	Alleviating symptoms and shortening the duration of viral shedding and hospital stay in patients with mild to moderate COVID-19	Open-label RCT
Arbidol vs. lopinavir–ritonavir	Zhu et al. [18]	Arbidol monotherapy may be superior to lopinavir/ritonavir for viral clearance	Retrospective study
Arbidol + lopinavir–ritonavir vs. lopinavir–ritonavir	Deng et al. [19]	Arbidol and LPV/r combination may be superior to LPV/r alone in elevating negative conversion rate	Retrospective study
Arbidol and moxifloxacin	Yu et al. [20]	Reducing viral load and inflammation	Retrospective study
Empirical antiviral regimens with or without arbidol	Xu et al. [21]	Arbidol could accelerate and enhance the process of viral clearance	Retrospective study
Tocilizumab	Eimer et al. [24]	Did not reduce all-cause mortality but was associated with a shorter time on mechanical ventilation	Retrospective study
Dexamethasone	RECOVERY Collaborative group [25]	Lower 28-day mortality among those who were receiving either invasive mechanical ventilation or oxygen alone but not among those receiving no respiratory support	Open-label RCT

We list the main findings of previous works

RCT randomized controlled trial