Background: Homeless population has been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Their living conditions, comorbidity with different pathologies and a greater frequency of mental disorders, make this population vulnerable. Method: We implemented a program of serial visits in a hostel for confined homeless of the city council social services, for the monitoring and treatment of mental disorders and substance abuse problems. Accompanied by serial phone and email contacts. Results: A highly significant percentage (63%) had mental disorders or substance abuse, requiring pharmacological intervention, and 37% began follow-up in resources of the Mental Health and Addiction network of the Psychiatric Service at the end of the program. Hospital emergency service visits were drastically reduced. None of them were infected with COVID-19. An individualized Social plan was drawn up in order to reintegrate them with support in the community. Conclusions: The Results have been really positive, meeting all the objectives and opening up developing new programs in the future, in the pandemic outbreak and out of it.

In the present study the prognostic value of both DNA ploidy and the proliferative activity of tomour cells were studied in a series of 76 consecutive patients suffering from gastric tumours. DNA ploidy and the proliferative index (as measured by the percentage of S-phase cells) were determined by flow cytometry using fresh tumour specimens.The presence of DNA aneuploid clones by flow cytometry was detected in 62% of the cases (mean DNA index of 1.63 ± 0.46; range 1.08–2.92), the mean proportion of S-phase cells being of 18.4 ± 11.5%. In comparison with diploid cases, aneuploid tumours showed a higher proliferative activity (cases with more than 15% S-phase cells: 18.4% versus 6.1%, p = 0.0001) as well as a higher incidence of node involvement (95% versus 68%, p = 0.001). By contrast, no significant differences were detected with respect to sex, age, histologic grade and type, clinical stage, tumour size and the incidence of extranodal involvement.Upon grouping the patients according to the proportion of S-phase cells no significant differences were observed for the clinical and biological parameters explored except for an association between a high percentage of S-phase cells and the presence of DNA aneuploidy (40% versus 96%, p = 0.0001). Regarding survival the presence of DNA aneuploidy was significantly associated with poor outcome as compared to the diploid cases (median of 15 versus 26 months, p = 0.005). By contrast, the proportion of S-phase cells did not predict patients’s outcome.Multivariate analysis of prognostic factors showed that the presence of DNA aneuploidy (p = 0.003) together with the histologic type (p = 0.03) and the existence of extranodal metastases (p = 0.05) were the best combination of prognostic factors for survival prediction.

We investigated whether there was an increased interest in quitting smoking in late February, March, and April compared with the preceding weeks. The interest in the search term 'how to quit smoking' showed significant increase on 9 March (90 RSV) and the interest in the search term reached 100 RSV on 19 April (Fig. 1). The interest in the search term 'how to quit alcohol' showed significant increase on 11 February (100 RSV). However, the interest for both the search terms was not stable over the study period (Fig. 1). Our study results showed no consistent increase in the number of searches for quitting smoking or quitting alcohol on Google during the study period (February to May). A recent study analyzing Google Trends regarding smoking cessation searches worldwide during the early months of the COVID-19 outbreak (9 January 2020 and 6 April 2020) also failed to show a tendency for increased interest in any of the key terms related to smoking cessation ('quit smoking,' 'smoking cessation,' 'help quit smoking,' and 'nicotine gum'). 8 However, another study from the Netherlands showed a significant increase in RSV 1 to 4 weeks after the introduction of the smoking ban in restaurants and bars in 2008, and also after the introduction of smoking cessation support in 2011. 10 Our study results may indicate that there has been no significant increased interest in quitting smoking and alcohol, at least among the Indian population who use online resources for health-related information. Our results further highlight the need for continuing public health efforts to inform the Indian public regarding the negative effects of smoking and alcohol during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, our study results were preliminary, and further research is needed to determine the long-term trend and compare it to the results of other studies.

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