NIC was previously found to suppress MERS-CoV propagation by enhancing autophagic flux through the Beclin1-SKP2 pathway (Gassen et al., 2019), and as such, NIC was proposed to be a potent candidate drug for repurposing in the treatment of SARS and COVID-19 (Xu et al., 2020; Prabhakara et al., 2021). This evidence concerns the gene BECN1 and COVID-19.