Previous studies investigated predictors of COVID-19 exacerbation according to chest CT scans and showed factors such as serum albumin, C reactive protein (CRP), and coronary plaque burden as predictors of COVID-19 outcomes (Supplementary Table 1) (Arkoudis et al., 2022; Fukumoto et al., 2022; Inoue et al., 2022; Ke et al., 2022; Koch et al., 2022; Lu et al., 2022; Wang et al., 2022; Yang et al., 2022). Here, ALB is linked to COVID-19.