Not enough participants recruited (about 30% at october 2021).

COVID-19 pandemic has deeply burdened hospitals all over the world. A two-stage disease has been hypothesized due to quick worsening of clinical status after 7-10 days from the beginning of first symptoms, generally flu-like symptoms. Predicting clinical worsening could help to address major efforts towards higher risk patients.

During the last year most observational studies, generally retrospective, has been conducted, identifying some risk factors such as age, obesity, male gender, cardiovascular disease, COPD, diabetes etc.

The study goal is to collect systematically a variegate amount of clinical, biometric, laboratory and radiological data from patients admitted to the Emergency Medicine Ward of Piacenza Hospital (Italy), in order to prospectively analyze what characteristics are associated to higher risk of mortality.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Admission to the Emergency Medicine Ward from the Emergency Department of Piacenza Hospital (Italy)
• Confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis through molecular test obtained from nasal-pharyngeal swabs in the Emergency Department
• Age above 18

Exclusion Criteria:

• inability to obtain an informed consent due to neurological conditions.
• patient's refusal to sign the informed consent
• inability of researchers to recruit the patient in the first 24 hours from the admission.

All patients admitted to the ward from the Emergency Department are proposed to participate to the study.

Patients admitted to the Emergency Medicine Ward have a COVID-19 pneumonia with respiratory failure at any stage of severity, with a PaO2/FiO2 ratio approximately between 100 and 300. Prevalence of severe cases changes according to the number of cases diagnosed in the community and consequently to the global number of admissions to the hospital. The study is intended to be conducted over a period of 1 year.