Acupuncture Strategies for COVID-19.

Once China abandoned its “zero-tolerance” policy of dealing with COVID-19, the disease spread like wildfire across China in December 2022 and January 2023, affecting a majority of China’s population. Acupuncture intervention in COVID-19 and post COVID-19 symptoms varied over time and across the country, from minimal use in 2020 to frontline engagement by 2023. As early as February 2020, the China Acupuncture and Moxibustion Association issued the document “Guidelines on Acupuncture and Moxibustion Intervention for COVID-19.” Since then, there has been sporadic publication of case histories, observational studies, and clinical trials in medical journals. By now, a pipeline of proposed systematic reviews is lined up that will document the history of acupuncture intervention for COVID-19 infection and post COVID symptom treatment. Rigorous clinical studies of acupuncture intervention for COVID-19 and long COVID are still very scanty, although pioneering efforts have been emerging. This paper attempts to document the trajectory of acupuncture intervention for COVID-19 through January, 2023. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]