With that in mind, researchers are searching for people around the world who might be resistant to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

"The introduction of SARS-CoV-2 to a naive population, on a global scale, has provided yet another demonstration of the remarkable clinical variability between individuals in the course of infection, ranging from asymptomatic infections to life-threatening disease," a team of researchers, led by immunologist Evangelos Andreakos from the Academy of Athens, writes in a new paper.

"Our understanding of the pathophysiology of life-threatening COVID-19 has progressed considerably since the disease was first described in December 2019, but we still know very little about the human genetic and immunological basis of inborn resistance to SARS-CoV-2.".

For example, we reported last year that blood type (particularly type O blood) seemed to show a slight resistance to severe SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The researchers have suggested that we need to be doing more to uncover those secret few in the population who might be genetically resistant to SARS-CoV-2.