Are Epidemiological Estimates Able to Describe the Ability of Health Systems to Cope with COVID-19 Epidemic?

Introduction: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic is an infectious disease which was declared a pandemic and hit countries worldwide from the beginning of the year 2020. Despite the emergency vigilance plans, health systems in all countries experienced a different ratio of lethality, amount of admissions to intensive care units and quarantine management of positive patients. The aim of this study is to investigate whether some epidemiological estimates could have been useful in understanding the capacity of the Italian Regional Health Services to manage the COVID-19 epidemic.

CoViD-19, learning from the past: A wavelet and cross-correlation analysis of the epidemic dynamics looking to emergency calls and Twitter trends in Italian Lombardy region.

The first case of Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Italy was detected on February the 20th in Lombardy region. Since that date, Lombardy has been the most affected Italian region by the epidemic, and its healthcare system underwent a severe overload during the outbreak. From a public health point of view, therefore, it is fundamental to provide healthcare services with tools that can reveal possible new health system stress periods with a certain time anticipation, which is the main aim of the present study.

Prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in an area of unrestricted viral circulation: Mass seroepidemiological screening in Castiglione d'Adda, Italy.

Castiglione D'Adda is one of the municipalities more precociously and severely affected by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) epidemic in Lombardy. With our study we aimed to understand the diffusion of the infection by mass serological screening. We searched for SARS-CoV-2 IgGs in the entire population on a voluntary basis using lateral flow immunochromatographic tests (RICT) on capillary blood (rapid tests).

Monitoring emergency calls and social networks for COVID-19 surveillance. To learn for the future: The outbreak experience of the Lombardia region in Italy.

On 18th February the first Italian case of Coronavirus Induced Disease 2019 (COVID19) due to secondary transmission outside China was identified in Codogno, Lombardia region. In the following days the number of cases started to rise not only in Lombardia but also in other Italian regions, although Lombardia remained and it is still the most affected region in Italy. At the moment, 234801 cases have been identified in Italy, out of which 90070 in Lombardia region.

Heterogeneity of COVID-19 outbreak in Italy.

An outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) started in December 2019 in China and was declared a pandemic on 11.03.2020 by WHO.