Luca Foresti

Soon after the first patients with coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) were diagnosed in Italy in February 2020, a severe epidemic developed.1 The greatest concentration of cases has been in Lombardy, a region of northern Italy with a population of 10 million in 2019. As of the end of April 2020, there had been 27 682 reported deaths from COVID-19 in Italy, compared with 26 097 in the UK, 24 543 in Spain, 4637 in China, and 60 966 in the US.2

In many countries, there is concern that the number… Visualizza altro

Soon after the first patients with coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) were diagnosed in Italy in February 2020, a severe epidemic developed.1 The greatest concentration of cases has been in Lombardy, a region of northern Italy with a population of 10 million in 2019. As of the end of April 2020, there had been 27 682 reported deaths from COVID-19 in Italy, compared with 26 097 in the UK, 24 543 in Spain, 4637 in China, and 60 966 in the US.2

In many countries, there is concern that the number of reported deaths from COVID-19 substantially understates the actual increase in mortality that may be directly or indirectly associated with the pandemic.3 We compared the number of reported deaths from COVID-19 in Italy and the increase in total mortality. Meno dettagli

The outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 in early 2020 found health authorities worldwide unprepared to control the pandemic. The adoption of accurate, rapid and inexpensive methods to identify infected subjects in the general population is of paramount relevance for the control of the disease. We evaluated one of the available serological tests, the Prima Lab Covid-19 IgG/IgM Rapid Tests, on 739 volunteers. We first assessed the test's reproducibility by administering it twice on the same day on 104… Visualizza altro

The outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 in early 2020 found health authorities worldwide unprepared to control the pandemic. The adoption of accurate, rapid and inexpensive methods to identify infected subjects in the general population is of paramount relevance for the control of the disease. We evaluated one of the available serological tests, the Prima Lab Covid-19 IgG/IgM Rapid Tests, on 739 volunteers. We first assessed the test's reproducibility by administering it twice on the same day on 104 subjects obtaining and overall score of 93 percent. Since the intensity of the color in the test line regions varies depending on the concentration of Covid-19 antibodies in each sample and that the determination of the positivity depends strictly on the subjective assessment by the reader, after excluding the subjects whose color intensity was too tenuous to be deemed unquestionably positive by the reader the reproducibility increased to 96%. The test would not perform properly for 6 subjects for a very limited overall technical failure of 0.83%. For 138 subjects information was available regarding a previous Real Time PCR nasopharyngeal swab test performed elsewhere. The correspondence of positive results between the two tests was 90.58% (125/138). In spite of some limitation owing especially to the choice of a self selected population sample, we conclude that Prima Lab Covid-19 IgG/IgM Rapid Test represents a low-cost, easily applicable and reproducible tool in detecting SARS-Cov-2 diffusion in the general population. Meno dettagli

Objective: To quantify the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) on all cause mortality in Nembro, an Italian city severely affected by the covid-19 pandemic.

Design: Descriptive study.

Setting: Nembro, in the Bergamo province of Lombardy, northern Italy.

Population: Residents of Nembro.

Main outcome measures: Monthly all cause mortality between January 2012 and April 2020 (data to 11 April), number of confirmed deaths from covid-19 to 11 April 2020, and… Visualizza altro

Objective: To quantify the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) on all cause mortality in Nembro, an Italian city severely affected by the covid-19 pandemic.

Design: Descriptive study.

Setting: Nembro, in the Bergamo province of Lombardy, northern Italy.

Population: Residents of Nembro.

Main outcome measures: Monthly all cause mortality between January 2012 and April 2020 (data to 11 April), number of confirmed deaths from covid-19 to 11 April 2020, and weekly absolute number of deaths between 1 January and 4 April across recent years by age group and sex.

Results: Nembro had 11 505 residents as of 1 January 2020. Monthly all cause mortality between January 2012 and February 2020 fluctuated around 10 per 1000 person years, with a maximum of 21.5 per 1000 person years. In March 2020, monthly all cause mortality reached a peak of 154.4 per 1000 person years. For the first 11 days in April, this rate decreased to 23.0 per 1000 person years. The observed increase in mortality was driven by the number of deaths among older people (≥65 years), especially men. From the outbreak onset until 11 April 2020, only 85 confirmed deaths from covid-19 in Nembro were recorded, corresponding to about half of the 166 deaths from all causes observed in that period.

Conclusions: The study findings show how covid-19 can have a considerable impact on the health of a small community. Furthermore, the results suggest that the full implications of the covid-19 pandemic can only be completely understood if, in addition to confirmed deaths related to covid-19, consideration is also given to all cause mortality in a given region and time frame. Meno dettagli

This paper describes topological searches for neutral scalar bosons S0 produced in association with a Z0 boson via the Bjorken process e+e- $\to $ S0 Z0 at centre-of-mass energies of 91 GeV and 183-209 GeV. These searches are based on studies of the recoil mass spectrum of Z0 $\to $ e+e- and $\mu^+ \mu^-$ events and on a search for S0 Z0 with Z0 $\to \nu\bar{\nu}$ and S0 $\to $ e+e- or photons. They cover the decays of the S0 into an arbitrary combination of hadrons, leptons, photons and… Visualizza altro

This paper describes topological searches for neutral scalar bosons S0 produced in association with a Z0 boson via the Bjorken process e+e- $\to $ S0 Z0 at centre-of-mass energies of 91 GeV and 183-209 GeV. These searches are based on studies of the recoil mass spectrum of Z0 $\to $ e+e- and $\mu^+ \mu^-$ events and on a search for S0 Z0 with Z0 $\to \nu\bar{\nu}$ and S0 $\to $ e+e- or photons. They cover the decays of the S0 into an arbitrary combination of hadrons, leptons, photons and invisible particles as well as the possibility that it might be stable.

No indication for a signal is found in the data and upper limits on the cross section of the Bjorken process are calculated. Cross-sec tion limits are given in terms of a scale factor k with respect to the Standard Model cross section for the Higgs-strahlung process e+e- $\to \mathrm{H}^0_{\mathrm{SM}}$ Z0 .

These results can be interpreted in general scenarios independently of the decay modes of the S0 . The examples considered here are the production of a single new scalar particle with a decay width smaller than the detector mass resolution, and for the first time, two scenarios with continuous mass distributions, due to a single very broad state or several states close in mass. Meno dettagli

This final article about the CHOOZ experiment presents a complete description of the electron antineutrino source and detector, the calibration methods and stability checks, the event reconstruction procedures and the Monte Carlo simulation. The data analysis, systematic effects and the methods used to reach our conclusions are fully discussed. Some new remarks are presented on the deduction of the confidence limits and on the correct treatment of systematic errors.

The CHOOZ experiment has measured the antineutrino flux at about 1 km fromtwo nuclear reactors to search for possible <(nu)over bar>(e)--><(nu)over bar>(x) oscillations with mass-squared differences as low as 10(-3) eV(2) for full mixing. We show that the analysis of the similar to 2700 <(nu)over bar>(e) events, collected by our liquid scintillation detector, locates theantineutrino source within a cone of half-aperture approximate to 18 degrees at the 68% C.L. We discuss… Visualizza altro

The CHOOZ experiment has measured the antineutrino flux at about 1 km fromtwo nuclear reactors to search for possible <(nu)over bar>(e)--><(nu)over bar>(x) oscillations with mass-squared differences as low as 10(-3) eV(2) for full mixing. We show that the analysis of the similar to 2700 <(nu)over bar>(e) events, collected by our liquid scintillation detector, locates theantineutrino source within a cone of half-aperture approximate to 18 degrees at the 68% C.L. We discuss the implications of this result for locating a supernova explosion. Meno dettagli