A large number of people are currently contracting COVID-19. Fortunately, most of them are experiencing only mild symptoms, largely thanks to the high vaccination rate. However, in some individuals the disease takes a much more severe cause and our understanding about the underlying reasons is still insufficient. The human genome may hold a key to why COVID-19 is more serious for some people than others. A team of scientists from the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) together with colleagues from the United Kingdom and Canada have found genes and proteins that contribute to a higher risk of severe COVID-19. Their findings have now been published in the journal Nature Communications