It was shown that coronavirus receptor, ACE2, is highly expressed in alveolar cell type II, which is responsable for surfactant secretion. Some reports said that COVID-19 patients sometimes lose their taste and smell, which is partially conducted by Tuft cells in the airway epithelium. It's quite interesting and important to study the cell types that preferentially infected by the coronavirus.
Based on the co-expression of ACE2 and TMPRSS2, proteins that interact with the Novel-Coronavirus allowing its attachment and entry, the putative target cells are the lung type II pneumocytes, ileal absorptive enterocytes, and nasal goblet secretory cells.
Check:
https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30500-6.pdf?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867420305006%3Fshowall%3Dtrue
ACE2 is also expressed in many organs in the body like the heart, lungs, liver etc, thus multi organ dysfunction seen in Severe cases of Covid19 may not be unconnected to its ability to enter this cells via the the receptor....