Recently, Ziegler et al. published transcriptomics results from nasopharyngeal swabs from 15 healthy adults, 14 adults with mild COVID-19 and 21 adults with severe COVID-19, and observed that nasal epithelial cells from patients with severe COVID-19 exhibited less robust expression of anti-viral IFN response genes as compared to patients with mild COVID-19 and healthy adults, supporting their conclusion that a “failed” nasal epithelial innate anti-viral response may be a risk factor for severe COVID-1925. This evidence concerns the gene IFNA1 and COVID-19.