Fewer asthmatic children were hospitalised for exacerbations during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. An analytical study conducted by Dr Nada Alabdulkarim, a paediatric resident at Children’s National Hospital in Washington D.C., and colleagues examined 50 cases along with 243 controls to find that there was also a trend toward fewer Hispanic children among the pandemic cases compared with the controls. The findings of the research, published in the journal Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, highlighted the potential protective effect of atopy among patients who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2.