We identified upregulation of several NFκB pathway components (NFKB2 and NFKBIA) and inflammatory cytokines (CXCL9, CCL17, and CCL21) in the presence of viral transcripts, in line with the abundant literature describing these molecules in the early steps of COVID-19 pathogenesis (Fig. 5a-b, Additional file 9: Table S9) [55–59]. Here, NFKBIA is linked to COVID-19.