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Evidence is accumulating of the negative impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic and related public health measures on mental health. In this emergent field, there has been little research into the role of risk perception on depressive symptoms and the contribution of health‐care resources to model risk perception and mental health. The aim of this paper is to describe the relationship between individual‐level perception of risk and depression, controlling for a set of confounders and for country‐level heterogeneity. A cross‐sectional and observational online survey was conducted using a non‐probability snowball sampling technique. We use data on 11,340 respondents, living in six European countries (Italy, Sweden, United Kingdom, France, Poland, Czech Republic) who completed survey questionnaires during the first months of the pandemic. We used a fixed‐effect approach, which included individual and macro‐level variables. The findings suggest that a high proportion of people suffering from depression and heightened risk perception is positively associated with reporting depressive symptoms, even if this relationship varies significantly between countries. Moreover, the association is moderated by contextual factors including health‐care expenditure as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product, hospital beds for acute care, and number of medical specialists per head of population. Investment in health care offers a concrete means of protecting the mental health of a population living under pandemic restrictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have described clinical features of patients with coronavirus disease (COVID‐19). However, limited data concerning the clinical characteristics of the Italian deaths are available. We aim to describe the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of 320 deceased from the Italian experience. We retrospectively collected all consecutive non‐survivor patients with laboratory‐confirmed COVID‐19 infection admitted to the Emergency Rooms (ERs) Piacenza Hospital Network during the first month of COVID‐19 pandemic in Italy. Clinical history, comorbidities, laboratory findings and treatment were recorded for each patient. A total of 1050 patients with confirmed COVID‐19 pneumonia were admitted to the ERs between 24 February and 22 March 2020. Three hundred and twenty (30.5%) patients died with a median age of 78.0 years, 205 (64%) non‐survivors were above 65 years old, 230 (71.9%) were male. Non‐survivor patients showed frequently several coexisting medical conditions, with hypertension being the most common comorbidity (235 patients, 73.4%). The in‐hospital mortality did not change during the progression of the pandemic. In this retrospective Italian study, most of COVID‐19 deceased patients were elderly male aged over than 65 years. Hypertension was the most common coexisting disease. In‐hospital mortality was high and showed no variation during the first month of the COVID‐19 italian epidemic. Highlights: This work highlights the clinical and epidemiological characteristics of COVID‐19 deceased patients in an Italian province with high in‐hospital mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]