Herbal medicine for the management of COVID-19 during the medical observation period: a review of guidelines

<title>Background</title><p>Medical observation period is a period of 14 days after any exposure to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) occurred. This review aimed to summarize and analyze the herbs and herbal formulae recommended by available guidelines.</p><title>Methods</title><p>A total of 14 sources were searched for potential guidelines that provide herbal medicine treatment for the medical observation period of COVID-19. We summarized and analyzed the recommended herbal formulae and performed a network analysis to identify the relationship between herbs.</p><title>Results</title><p>We found 9 guidelines that provide herbal formula for medical observation based on clinical manifestation. There are 12 herbal formulae with a total of 53 herbs recommended by the guidelines. The result of our network analysis showed that the herb Citri Reticulatae Pericarpium (<italic>Chen Pi</italic>) strongly paired with the herb Glycyrrhizae Radix et Rhizoma (<italic>Gan Cao</italic>).</p><title>Conclusion</title><p>This review briefly summarized the usage of herbal medicine for the medical observation period of COVID-19 and may serve as a reference for future studies. More research is needed in the future to provide evidence on the usage of herbal medicine in various phases of COVID-10.</p>