As a new virus, COVID-19 virus has no therapeutics to treat. How could we use TCM to fight it? Dr. Qiu Haibo, a western medicine doctor and Zhongda Hospital of Southeast University, explained from the angel of pathogenesis, how the early intervention of TCM reduced the progression from mild and moderate disease to severe disease, from severe disease to critical disease.

As we can see from the clinical treatment, there are three steps from mild and moderate disease to severe and critical disease: reproduction, cytokine response and organ lesion. When the virus makes enough copies to a virus load, it will cause cytokine response, such as blood coagulation dysfunction, endodermis cell damage, and then cause multi-organ damage to critical disease.

Therefore, Dr. Qiu mentioned that, the early intervention of TCM could help to curb the cytokine storm and minimized the damage to the organs.

Inflammatory response is what we mention as inflammation. It is a protective response when the body is attacked, such as swell and pain when a hand was accidentally burnt. However, the over-response will lead to organ lesions, which will cause the deterioration of a disease. 

The early over-response of COVID-19 patients shows fever, muscle pain. Dr. Qiu stated that, the over-response cause by bacteria and viruses is generally treated with pain killers. In fact, most TCM drugs, decoctions and injections work to curb it too, with less side-effect. For example, the early use of Lianhua Qingwen Capsule could reduce fever, which could be seen as a good medicine to curb the inflammatory over-response. Xuebijing Injection, a TCM injection, could be used as a good protection of endodermis cells, which helps to curb the coagulation dysfunction. Therefore, the TCM intervention could curb the cytokine storm at an early stage, hence preventing the mild and moderate disease from progressing to severe. With the same theory, it helps to prevent the severe disease from progressing to critical. 

For severe cases, the COVID-19 virus does not only cause lung lesions, but also multi-organ damage. Most chemical drugs are single-targeted, while TCM are more multi-targeted. For example, for a patient with abdominal distension, Dahuang is given in the clinical treatment when the toxin is absorbed in intestines; Shenmai Injection and Shenfu Injection is given with a heart lesion; Xuebijing Injection is given with lung lesions, and at least 6 components of Xuebijing Injection have been proven. Dr. Qiu mentioned that with multi-organ damages, a few chemical drugs should be jointly used, while the joint use of multiple-targeted TCM drugs and injections are more effective.

In regards to the specific effectiveness of TCM drugs, Dr. Qiu said that, TCM should be evaluated on its efficacy with the internationally accepted randomized controlled methods before it goes to a wider and higher stage.