Brief History, Pathophysiology, Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 Virus, and Recent Advances on Transition Metal Complexes and Nanocomposites as the Potent Antiviral Agents from COVID-19 Perspectives

The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 has resulted in an unprecedented and greatest global health crisis in the present century affecting more than 220 countries with 3.7 million deaths and 173.5 million individual infections till now. This pandemic has had an enormous impact on global healthcare, economy, and society, which has prompted extensive research on exploring the biology of SARS-CoV-2 and the discovery of new drugs for COVID-19. The lack of effective antiviral drugs for COVID-19 has initiated the effort to repurpose selected FDA-approved antiviral drugs for the treatment of COVID-19 along with plasma therapy. Vaccination has proven to be the effective prevention strategy against the SARS-CoV-2 virus, although mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus have become the major concern due to the decreasing effectiveness of the vaccines Therefore, an effective cure for COVID-19 is still an elusive goal. Transition metal complexes by a broad spectrum of formal charge and oxidation states, wide range of coordination number and geometry, tunable kinetic, thermodynamic, and redox properties, diverse reaction pathways have emerged as the alternative and viable tools in the medicinal domain from therapeutics to diagnostics. Several transition metal complexes proved their efficacy against various types of viruses and recent advances on the potent transition metal complexes or nanoconjugates are reviewed in this chapter. The present chapter also aims to discuss the perspectives on the potential utility of transition metal complexes or the nanoconjugates against SARS-CoV-2.