Except for the Omicron variant (which lacks neuroinvasion and induces minimal lung disease), K18-hACE2 mice develop lethal disease associated with mild-to-moderate pulmonary pathology and lethal neurodissemination, corroborated by quantification of peak viral loads in the brain during terminal disease [28,34,35,36,41,52,53,54]. Here, KRT18 is linked to lung disorder.