There have been several reports that indicated meager Cytolethal Distending Toxin‐induced lymphocytes, with a density as low as 200 cells/mm3 in three patients with SARS‐CoV infection (Chu et al., 2014; Zhou et al., 2014). As in the case of SARS‐CoV‐2, it has been suspected that infection with this type of CoV might lead to inflammatory cytokine storm (Chen, Liu, et al., 2020; Zumla et al., 2020); a life‐threatening condition characterized by elevated levels of interleukin 6 (IL‐6) in plasma. A number of investigations recently conducted on COVID‐19 have reported that IL‐6 levels was actually higher in the patients with severe disease (Cai, 2020; Chen, Liu, et al., 2020; Xiang et al., 2020). This could highlight the importance of IL‐6 as a biomarker for evaluation of disease severity (Chen, Zhao, et al., 2020).