Introduction Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious illness primarily affecting the respiratory system and is caused by the novel Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [1,2]. COVID-19 was recognized as a global pandemic on March 11th, 2020 [3]. Since the onset of the pandemic, there have been over 97 million confirmed cases and over 1 million deaths in the U.S. [4]; globally, there have been over 626 million confirmed cases and over 6.5 million deaths [5].