CXCL8 and COVID-19: IL8 is elevated in plasma of COVID-19 patients (Blanco-Melo et al., 2020; Hariharan et al., 2021; Li et al., 2021) and is a marker of acute severe lung distress (Adcock et al., 2015), an inflammatory condition that can lead to severe complications or death, further confirming the relevance of our model in mimicking the molecular events triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection.