On Mar. 24, 2020, a new international project aims to enroll 500 COVID-19 patients to search for genetic mutations that make some people more vulnerable to severe infection. Hundreds of clinicians worldwide are banding together in an effort to study some types of severe cases of the new coronavirus disease.

The project, led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator Jean-Laurent Casanova at The Rockefeller University, seeks to identify genetic errors that make some younger patients especially vulnerable to the virus that causes COVID-19, the infectious respiratory illness also known as coronavirus disease 2019.