In patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, excessive inflammatory responses are considered to play a major role in the pathogenesis of severe coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) disease, leading to acute respiratory distress syndrome and multiple-organ failure (Moore and June, 2020). Dysregulated inflammatory profile, defective immune responses and lymphopenia have also been identified as important features of severe disease (Del Valle et al., 2020; Bordoni et al., 2020).