Since COVID-19 outbreak has spread from Wuhan (China) to worldwide, many Countries are dealing with the impact of this pandemic on different aspects of their lives: sanitary, sociocultural and economic. Italy represents a paradigm of different effects of pandemic on citizens' health. In fact, North Italy showed high rates of transmission [mean national transmission index (R t) referred to the February-April 2020 period was always >1 in North Italy regions, while <1 in South Italy)] and mortality (5.4% of positive cases in Lombardia-North Italy-vs 1.3% in Campania-South Italy-) due to severe pneumonitis while South Italy displayed a very low epidemic curve suggesting that contagiousness and/or virulence could be lower than North Italy [1-4]. Furthermore, both in the first phase of COVID-19-related crisis (February-April 2020) and in the second one started in September 2020 the COVID-19-specific death ratio North:South was 5:1 with a standardized mortality ratio from 3 to 7.5 in North versus 0.012 to 0.5 in South Italy [1-4].
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