Results
As of April 20, 2020, there were 100 patients consecutively hospitalized with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 whose age distribution and baseline characteristics are summarized in Table 1 . Most patients had advanced age with a median of 75 years old (range 28-96) and more than 61% were older than 70 years old. There was a high burden of comorbidities, the most frequent being hypertension (63%), diabetes mellitus (22%) and different cardiovascular diseases including heart, cerebrovascular and peripheral artery diseases (28%). There was a high risk for mortality according to the PROFUND score. In contrast, few patients were active of former smokers or had other conditions such as chronic respiratory diseases, malignancy or HIV infection (only one patient). Table 2 shows clinical, radiological and laboratory findings. The most frequent symptoms were fever (80%), cough (69%), fatigue (59%) and dyspnoea (52%) but other symptoms such as anorexia (36%) or diarrhoea (21%) were not uncommon. The most common findings on chest radiographs were bilateral interstitial infiltrates (65%) and no radiographic abnormality was found in 11 patients (11%). Only two chest CT were performed showing pulmonary thromboembolism in both cases. Lung ultrasound (LUS) was performed in 46 patients and only 3 patients (6.5%) had no abnormalities. The most frequent LUS abnormalities were score 1 findings (bilateral vertical “B-kerley” lines) in 38 patients (82.6%) followed by score 2 findings (thickened and irregular pleural line) in 5 patients (10.9%). The most frequent laboratory abnormalities were lymphocytopenia, elevated levels of C-reactive protein, creatine kinase, lactate dehydrogenase and D-Dimer. Treatment during hospital admission is shown in Table 3 . All patients received oxygen (using Venturi mask or nasal cannula) and one third required high oxygen concentrations (higher than 50%). One third of patients received only symptomatic treatment and the remaining 69% received medical treatment, the most frequent being the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin in 66 cases. No medication-related adverse event was observed.
During hospitalization, 26 patients (26%) died and 10 (10%) were transferred to the ICU. The outcome in the UCI was as follows: 4 patients died and 6 were discharged at home. After a median length of stay of 7 days, the remaining 64 patients (64%) were discharged at home with no readmissions.