Although the effort to provide updated and reliable statistics about coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) remains a challenging enterprise due to the ongoing epidemiologic evolution and an almost inevitable bias in the official reporting systems [1], the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that as many as 780 million severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections and 6.9 million COVID-19 related deaths have occurred as of March 2023, thus allowing to rank COVID-19 as one of the most widespread and deadly pandemics in recent human history [2].
