1) News from Thailand (but there's more!)
"Thailand’s Cabinet has approved the use of Fah Talai Jone (green chiretta or Andrographis paniculate) to treat asymptomatic cases of COVID-19, after a successful trial of the herbal remedy in prisons.
Deputy government spokesperson Ratchada Thanadirek said treatment with the herb will help relieve pressure on the public health system, with more than 14,000 new cases being reported daily.
She said the trial on infected prison inmates showed Fah Talai Jone can prevent the virus from entering cells while reducing viral replication. The Corrections Department gave the herbal remedy to 11,800 inmates with mild symptoms and 99.02% of them recovered."
https://thainews.prd.go.th/en/news/detail/TCATG210728114450300
2) News from Vietnam too!
"Head of the Traditional Medicine Management Department under the Health Ministry Nguyen The Thinh said that by the end of July, the department will transfer to Ho Chi Minh City one million tablets of Andrographis Paniculata (commonly known as green chiretta), a herbal plant extract, to treat COVID-19 patients.
Thinh said that the department proposed leaders of the Ministry of Health use Andrographis Paniculata while treating COVID-19 patients and this was approved by the Ministry of Health and the National Steering Committee on COVID-19 pandemic prevention and control.
Thinh noted that the herbal medicine was used in Bac Giang and Bac Ninh to treat the early stages of COVID-19 with positive results and the remedy is now to be used in the South.
The herbal medicine has been used by a number of countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand."
I thought the same thing too when I read that sentence. In the few scientific articles I can find on green chiretta, Southeast Asian herbalists believe it helps for Covid due to the presence of andrographolide and dimethoxyflavone, which they think suppress the protease enzyme of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/chemistry/dimethoxyflavone
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Andrographolide
The main benefits they claim from green chiretta is that it helps people to keep their symptoms mild enough that they can be treated at home, thus reducing hospital overcrowding. They suggest that it also helps hospitalized patients get released to home care faster, but I can't find quantitative data for this.
This seems to be one of the foundational scientific papers on green chiretta use for WuFlu, on which many of the Southeast Asian nations are relying for promoting this herb:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.12.08.415836v1.full
Green chiretta does not seem to be widely available in North America or Europe. Not sure about Australia/NZ. There are a couple of listings on Amazon for this stuff but I'm not sure if the suppliers are reliable.
In Southeast Asia there is now a big rush by families to start growing this herb in their home gardens.... which is a lot smarter than people depending on a doctor/pharmacy to give it to them.
Treatment? Wow. What a concept!
Another herb that is becoming widely used in Southeast Asia for WuFlu is "Flos Lonicerae" (also called "Lonicerae japonicae Flos" in academic articles).
https://pesquisa.bvsalud.org/global-literature-on-novel-coronavirus-2019-ncov/resource/en/covidwho-833153
This has been used for centuries in Asia for cold/flu type illnesses and it seems to work well when taken together with green chiretta.