Artemisinin is hoped to mitigate the cytokine-mediated inflammatory injury associated with the cytokine storm and viral sepsis in critically ill COVID-19 patients (Aldieri et al., 2003; Xu et al., 2007; Wu et al., 2010; He et al., 2011; Mo et al., 2012; Li et al., 2013; Jiang et al., 2016; Alhelfawi, 2020; Zhang et al., 2020), in part owing to its ability to block the TGF-β surge which contributes to the development of lung injury and ARDS (Pittet et al., 2001; Budinger et al., 2005; Bossman and Ward, 2014; Frank and Matthay, 2014; Hu and Huang, 2019; Chen, 2020; Zuo et al., 2020). This evidence concerns the gene TGFB1 and acute respiratory distress syndrome.