Although small and with limited capacity for repeat, a cohort study of 12 SARS-CoV-2 patients demonstrated that circulating Ang II levels were markedly elevated compared to healthy controls, which was linearly correlated with viral load (P = 0.035) (Liu et al. 2020b), indicating that such downregulation of ACE2 could facilitate the multi-organ damage associated with viral infection. Here, ACE2 is linked to viral infectious disease.