No abstract

Prevalence of anxiety/depression was investigated in 105 COVID‐19 patients at 1‐3 months from virological clearance by Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS‐A/D). 30% of patients displayed pathological HADS‐A/D, 52.4% showed persistent symptoms. Pathological HADS‐A/D patients more commonly reported symptom persistence, even after adjustment for age, gender, disease severity. Psychological assessments should be encouraged in COVID‐19 patients’ follow‐up. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Background: Mortality rate from COVID-19 in Italy is among the world’s highest. We aimed to ascertain whether there was any reduction of in-hospital mortality in patients hospitalised for COVID-19 in the second-wave period (October 2020–January 2021) compared to the first one (February–May 2020); further, we verified whether there were clusters of hospitalised patients who particularly benefitted from reduced mortality rate. Methods: Data collected related to in-patients’ demographics, clinical, laboratory, therapies and outcome. Primary end-point was time to in-hospital death. Factors associated were evaluated by uni- and multivariable analyses. A flow diagram was created to determine the rate of in-hospital death according to individual and disease characteristics. Results: A total of 1561 patients were included. The 14-day cumulative incidence of in-hospital death by competing risk regression was of 24.8% (95% CI: 21.3–28.5) and 15.9% (95% CI: 13.7–18.2) in the first and second wave. We observed that the highest relative reduction of death from first to second wave (more than 47%) occurred mainly in the clusters of patients younger than 70 years. Conclusions: Progress in care and supporting therapies did affect population over 70 years to a lesser extent. Preventive and vaccination campaigns should focus on individuals whose risk of death from COVID-19 remains high.