SARS-CoV-2 is thought to use ACE2 as a viral receptor, which is a cell receptor for viral entry. The ACE2-expressing cells in lung tissues are more pronounced in East Asians than other populations, according to preliminary studies. Africans are more susceptible to Covid-19 than Caucasians but much less so than East Asians, based on allele frequencies of ACE2 (Fig. 1c).
The East Asian populations have much higher AFs in the eQTL variants associated with higher ACE2 expression in tissues (Fig. 1c), which may suggest different susceptibility or response to 2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2 from different populations under the similar conditions.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41421-020-0147-1