**5. Rapamycin and hydroxychloroquine: story of two repurposed drugs against the virus**

SARS-CoV-2 spreads rapidly in comparison to its two cousins- SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV [27]. Therefore an effective drug development strategy is needed to control the faster spread of the disease, which is a time-consuming process. Repurposing or repositioning the already existing and approved drugs can help to shorten this time span and cost expenses. Rapamycin, which is an mTOR-inhibitor, is proposed to be a potential drug candidate against COVID-19 [28]. Rapamycin can play significant roles as a potential antibiotic in case of COVID-19, it can check the packaging of viral particles, prevent cytokine storms and also through its anti-aging and anti-obesity effects can be useful in this viral infection [28–30].

Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ ), which is a much hyped candidate drug against COVID-19, has received a very straight forward judgment - it has no benefit in treatment of Covid-19 [31]. A group of medical doctors studied a population consisting of a total of 4984 patients with COVID-19, out of which 35.5% were provided with HCQ or its congeners and 62.01% were provided standard of care or had included antiviral medication. However, the estimated success of the treatment of both the groups was similar (77.45% and 77.87% respectively). This study shows that HCQ does not show any significant benefit in patients affected by COVID-19. Apart from many limitations in this study which includes patient cohort selection, variations in HCQ dosage etc. this study aligns with many studies regarding the ineffectiveness of the drug [32, 33].
