Early reports from the Chinese province of Hubei described some predictive biomarkers for the clinical outcome of hospitalised patients, namely lymphopenia and the elevation of D-dimer, ferritin, interleukin 6 (IL-6), troponin and myoglobin, C-reactive protein (CRP) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) [1, 2]. Here, IL6 is linked to lymphopenia.