Abstract
Lombardy, the largest and most densely populated Italian region, was severely hit in February 2020 by the first pandemic wave of SARS-CoV-2 and associated COVID-19. Since then, additional infection waves spread in the region. The aim of this study was to compare the first with the subsequent waves using the administrative database of the Lombardy Welfare directorate. In the time frames of the four 2020–2022 waves, the absolute number of infected cases, sites of management and crude mortality rate associated with SARS-CoV-2 positivity were extracted from the database. Infected cases progressively increased in the region by approximately 5-fold in the second versus the first wave, 4-fold in the third and 20-fold during the most recent wave mainly associated with the omicron variant. The crude death decreased from 18.7% in the first to 2% in the second and third wave to reach a 0.3% nadir at the time of the fourth wave. This study confirms that in Lombardy outcomes of public health and health-care relevance such as deaths and number of hospitalizations declined dramatically across the four virus waves and reached very low values in 2022 when, at variance with the first three SARS-CoV-2 waves, the majority of infected cases had been previously vaccinated.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Giuseppe Preziosi, Monica Arivetti, and Giovanna Rigotti from ARIA S.p.A, Alfredo Bevilacqua from Laife Reply S.p.A., Marco D. Forlani from T Bridge—BV Tech S.p.A, and Igor Monti from Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS who kindly assisted us with data collection. We also thank Regione Lombardia, Grant/Award Number: DGR n. 3375—July 14, 2020; Health Ministry of the Lombardy, Grant/Award Number: EPIFARM-Pharmaco-epidemiology.
Funding
Regione Lombardia, Grant/Award Number: DGR n. 3375—July 14, 2020; Health Ministry of the Lombardy, Grant/Award Number: EPIFARM-Pharmaco-epidemiology.
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AN, PMM MT, GR, BDA, AAG, SH: study concept and design; IF and OL: acquisition of data; AN, PMM MT, BDA, AAG, SH: analysis and interpretation of data; PMM, AN, BDA, MT: drafting of the manuscript. All authors were involved in the critical revision of the manuscript and for intellectual content. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.
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This study was conducted according to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments and approved by local institutional review board (0051814/19). Being a retrospective study performed on an administrative database of anonymized patients, patients’ informed consent was waived.
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11739_2023_3315_MOESM1_ESM.jpg
Supplementary Number and timing of SARS-CoV-2 positive cases in the Lombardy region database (February 2020-2022) file1 (JPG 95 KB)
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Mannucci, P.M., Galbussera, A.A., D’Avanzo, B. et al. Two years of SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and COVID-19 in Lombardy, Italy. Intern Emerg Med 18, 1445–1451 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11739-023-03315-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11739-023-03315-7