Being touted on facebook groups, but no good evidence to support its use.
However, there is some prior plausibly, which suggests it might work:
“Nicotine has been shown to be protective in a handful of other diseases, and laboratory studies suggest it may play a part in regulating an enzyme called ACE2, which is thought to be involved in COVID-19.” (1)
However, overall the evidence for plausibility is very mixed, with some studies showing less hospitalisation of smokers with covid-19, suggesting some preventative effects. However, this could simple be a example of reporting bias. Other evidence suggested that smoking is a risk factor in contracting covid and long covid.
The only evidence (2) that supports this treatment go Long Covid is one case study involving four people, they stated: “we witnessed improvements ranging from immediate and substantial to complete remission in a matter of days”
The study hints that recovery is possible within one month, although they did not study the patients for longer. The study is severely limited as it was only four people and it was completely unblinded, with one patient selecting completely the wrong dose
Nicotine patches are certainly safer than smoking. However, choosing to use nicotine patches as a non smoker could be harmful. Therefore we suggest avoiding this treatment. It studies(3) on nicotine patches (7.1%) non-smokers stopped treatment because of an adverse event of nicotine.
"Despite a relatively safe tolerance profile, [nicotine patches] in non-smokers can only be used in clinical trials. There is a lack of formal assessment of the potential risk of developing a tobacco addiction.”
So very little evidence that it works and significant concerns about developing a very harmful tabasco addiction, therefore best avoided until better evidence comes to light.
References
1 https://www.cebm.ox.ac.uk/news/views/nicotine-therapy-for-coronavirus-the-evidence-is-weak-and-contradictory
2 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36650574/
3 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34153704/