Background: Since the confirmation of the first patient infected with SARS-CoV-2 in Spain in January 2020, the epidemic has grown rapidly, with the greatest impact on the region of Madrid. This article describes the first 2226 adult patients with COVID-19, consecutively admitted to La Paz University Hospital in Madrid. Methods: Our cohort included all patients consecutively hospitalized who had a final outcome (death or discharge) in a 1286-bed hospital of Madrid (Spain) from 25 February (first case admitted) to 19 April 2020. The data were manually entered into an electronic case report form, which was monitored prior to the analysis. Results: We consecutively included 2226 adult patients admitted to the hospital who either died (460) or were discharged (1766). The patients’ median age was 61 years, and 51.8% were women. The most common comorbidity was arterial hypertension (41.3%), and the most common symptom on admission was fever (71.2%). The median time from disease onset to hospital admission was 6 days. The overall mortality was 20.7% and was higher in men (26.6% vs. 15.1%). Seventy-five patients with a final outcome were transferred to the intensive care unit (ICU) (3.4%). Most patients admitted to the ICU were men, and the median age was 64 years. Baseline laboratory values on admission were consistent with an impaired immune-inflammatory profile. Conclusions: We provide a description of the first large cohort of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in Europe. Advanced age, male sex, the presence of comorbidities and abnormal laboratory values were more common among the patients with fatal outcomes.

Suicide is a major public health concern in the United States. Between 2000 and 2018, US suicide rates increased by 35%, contributing to the stagnation and subsequent decrease in US life expectancy. During 2019, suicide declined modestly, mostly owing to slight reductions in suicides among Whites. Suicide rates, however, continued to increase or remained stable among all other racial/ethnic groups, and little is known about recent suicide trends among other vulnerable groups. This article ( a) summarizes US suicide mortality trends over the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, ( b) reviews potential group-level causes of increased suicide risk among subpopulations characterized by markers of vulnerability to suicide, and ( c) advocates for combining recent advances in population-based suicide prevention with a socially conscious perspective that captures the social, economic, and political contexts in which suicide risk unfolds over the life course of vulnerable individuals.