Zhou et al. (2020a) identified increased IL-6 production in monocytes of patients with COVID-19. Studies suggest that the severity of COVID-19 is associated with elevated levels of inflammatory mediators; however, the elevation of IL-6 in the blood is highly correlated with the mortality caused by COVID-19 when survivors and non-survivors are compared (Liu et al., 2020; Zhou et al., 2020b). IL-6 is essential for the generation of Th17 cells. The increase in IL-6 may explain the rise in the Th17 profile found in patients with COVID-19, as reported by Xu et al. (2020). This evidence concerns the gene IL6 and COVID-19.