Updated landscape of inhaled medications to combat COVID-19.

Plain language summary The COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmed the healthcare systems worldwide. This calls for development of medicines that work effectively to decrease the death toll and severity of the infection. These medicines should be easy to administer to maintain patient compliance. Inhalation therapy is a needleless and painless route of administration that leads to fewer side effects. Various types of carriers are used for delivery of drugs via inhalation route. Vaccines can also be delivered via inhalation. Various researchers have studied vaccines via inhalation route, which have the potential to be translated into developing inhalable vaccines for COVID-19.