The pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 MESHD and the related disorder i.e. “ coronavirus disease 2019 MESHD” ( COVID-19 MESHD) have encouraged researchers to unravel the molecular mechanism of disease severity. Several lines of evidence support the impact of "cytokine storm" in the pathogenesis of severe forms of the disorder MESHD. We aimed to assess the expression levels of nine cytokine coding in COVID-19 MESHD patients admitted in a hospital. Expression levels of IFN-G HGNC, IL-2 HGNC, IL-4 HGNC, IL-6 HGNC, IL-17 HGNC, TGF-B HGNC, IL-8 HGNC and IL-1B HGNC were significantly higher in COVID-19 MESHD patients compared with healthy controls and in both female and male patients compared with sex-matched controls. However, expression of none of these cytokines was different between ICU-admitted patients and other patients except for IL-6 HGNC whose expression was lower in the former group compared with the latter (ratio of means = 0.33, P value = 4.82E-02). Expression of TNF-A HGNC was not different between COVID-19 MESHD patients and healthy controls. Then, we assessed diagnostic power of cytokine coding genes in differentiating between COVID-19 MESHD patients and controls. The area under curve (AUC) values range from 0.94 for IFN-G HGNC to 1.0 for IL-2 HGNC and IL-1B HGNC. After combining the transcript levels of all cytokines, AUC, sensitivity and specificity values reached 1.0, 1.0 and 0.99, respectively. For differentiation between ICU-admitted patients and other patients, IL-4 HGNC with AUC value of 0.68, had the best diagnostic power among cytokine coding genes. Expression of none of cytokine coding genes was correlated with the assessed clinical/demographic data including age, gender, ICU admission, or CRP HGNC/ESR levels. Our study provides further evidence for contribution of “cytokine storm” in the pathobiology of moderate/severe forms of COVID-19 MESHD.