Accelerating Drug Development Through Repurposed FDA-Approved Drugs for COVID-19: Speed is Important, Not Haste

A life-threatening, emerging respiratory disease, called coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), originated in the city of Wuhan in China’s Hubei province in December 2019 and has been classified as an international pandemic by the World Health Organization. As of 30 April 2020, more than 3,249,022 COVID-19 cases caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) have been recorded worldwide, and more than 230,804 people have been reported dead. Upon this outbreak, global collaborations between the public, private, and academic sectors have been coordinated, and as a result of these extraordinary endeavors, SARS-CoV-2 has been identified and characterized (1, 2).