Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a novel coronavirus first identified in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019. Since then it has caused more than 1,700,000 confirmed cases of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) worldwide and almost 110,000 deaths [1]. It is responsible for a respiratory syndrome ranging from mild flu-like symptoms to severe respiratory failure (due to acute respiratory distress syndrome), shock, multiorgan failure and death. [2]. SARS-CoV-2 has been first identified in a bronchoalveolar-lavage fluid collected from patients with pneumonia admitted in a hospital of Wuhan on late December [3] and a real-time reverse transcriptase–polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) of nasopharyngeal swabs is currently used to confirm the clinical diagnosis [4].
