The list was completed afterwards with 69 additional cases due to the delay in the reporting process from some centers of COVID-19 infection. The official report included information about gender, age, county of residence, history of hospitalization and diagnostics, and/ or comorbidities. Only cases with information about gender, age and comorbidities were included in the study due to the main focus of the research42. Eventually, 432 patients who fulfilled these criteria were kept in the Romanian COVID-19 mortality sub-study. Since we aim at an analytic and not statistical generalization of the results regarding the comorbidity patterns, statistical testing was just serving exploratory purposes42. Hence, the complete-case analysis is justified in this case both by purpose and by the state of things.