INTRODUCTION: Viruses that cause respiratory infections, commonly called "flu," kill thousands of people annually. In 2020, the World Health Organization declared a pandemic state due to COVID-19 infection. The virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, causes acute respiratory syndrome, which currently has no established treatment and is capable of widespread dissemination. OBJECTIVE: Systematically provide evidence of azithromycin’s pleiotropic antiviral effects. METHODOLOGY: Pubmed database search for articles related by the terms: “antiviral” and “azithromycin”. RESULTS: Although there are no clinical protocols that can clearly evaluate the antiviral effectiveness of azithromycin, 73,3% of the articles found concluded that azithromycin has potential pleiotropic antiviral activity that should be further investigated. CONCLUSION: Azithromycin has the potential to be repurposed as an antiviral drug, however, further studies are needed for targeting the drug’s action against specific viral pathogens as well as double-blind, randomized clinical trials. Keywords: Emerging drugs. Azithromycin. Antiviral. Immunomodulatory effects