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Since December 2019, patients with unexplained pneumonia have been found in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, which was caused by a novel coronavirus that had not been previously identified. 1 Tentatively defined as 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), the pathogen has now been named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), 2 while the disease is termed Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). On 12 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that COVID-19 constitutes a pandemic. As of 5 April 2020, the world has reported 1,218,090 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 65,836 deaths (case fatality rate 5.4%), finding healthcare systems unprepared to tackle this threat. For this reason, governments, doctors, health workers, scientists and all citizens must cooperate worldwide to slow-down COVID-19 spread, contain the damage and find effective cures and preventive measures. Here we will provide a short and schematic overview of the implications for clinical hepatologists and researchers in the field based on the first available data.