LAUSR

O n December 31, 2019, China reported the first cases of pneumonia of unknown cause that would later be identified as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). SARS-CoV-2 rapidly spread, resulting in a pandemic, and as of April 10, 2020, there were almost 1.6 million confirmed cases reported worldwide, with approximately 97,200 deaths. The United States is currently the country with the highest number of infections, 466,396, with 16,703 deaths. Italy, with 143,626 confirmed cases since the beginning of the epidemic, has the highest number of deaths, 18,279. In particular, Lombardy (a region in northern Italy with a population of 10,000,000) has been the Italian region most affected by SARS-Cov-2: since the beginning of the epidemic 54,802 people have contracted the virus, and, of these, 10,022 people have died. Patients undergoing hemodialysis (HD) treatment and health care staff may be at high risk of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) both because of the difficulty in applying isolation and social distancing, and the immunosuppressed state and frailty of patients. There are few data available from China on the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in HD patients and no data on HD patients from other countries. We report the experience of a large HD center in Lombardy, Italy, during the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in March 2020.