We detected a strong association of NEIL2 with full length SARS-CoV-2 5’-UTR RNA, mimicking the in vivo post infection CoV-2 RNA-NEIL2 interactions (Fig. 5a), but not with the 5’-UTR RNA of several host genes; GAPDH, HPRT and DNA polymerase β (POLB) as controls (Supplementary Fig. 7b). Here, NEIL2 is linked to infection.