*3.2. FCV-19S Items*

Histograms of the seven items of the Fear of COVID questionnaire in the overall population are shown in Figure 1. Most of the items were distributed asymmetrically, with the lowest frequencies in the higher value categories.

No significant differences were observed when considering each item's values according to gender (Table 1). The percentage of answers corresponding to score 1 and 2 ("strongly disagree" or "disagree"), 3 ("neutral"), or 4 and 5 ("agree" and "strongly agree") in both sexes are reported in Figure 2.

**Figure 1.** Histograms of the seven items of the Fear of COVID questionnaire in the overall STEMI population.

**Figure 2.** Histograms reporting the % answers corresponding to score 1 and 2 ("strongly disagree" or "disagree"), 3 ("neutral"), or 4 and 5 ("agree" and "strongly agree") in STEMI female and male patients.

There was a significant correlation between age and item 4 ("I am afraid of losing my life because of the coronavirus") (r = 0.3, *p* < 0.05) in the overall STEMI population. Moreover, when the STEMI population was divided by the 25th percentile of age corresponding to 57 years, the percentage of subjects who responded positively ("agree" or "strongly agree") compared to those who responded negatively ("disagree" or "strongly disagree") to item 4 ("I am afraid of losing my life because of the coronavirus", belonging to emotional fear reactions, *p* < 0.05) and 3 ("My hands become clammy when I think about the coronavirus", belonging to the symptomatic expression of fear, *p* ≤ 0.05) was significantly higher in the STEMI elderly patient group (Figure 3).

**Figure 3.** Percentage of STEMI patients answering positively "agree" or "strongly agree" or negatively "disagree" or "strongly disagree" to items 4 and 3 in the groups rated according to the 25th percentile of age (corresponding to 57 years). (Answers reporting "neutral" were excluded by the analysis.) Values are reported as n (%).

When CV patients referred to the outpatient department during the first period of the COVID-19 outbreak (2) were compared to 30 CV outpatients examined in the period November 2020–May 2021, item 6 ("I cannot sleep because I'm worrying about getting the coronavirus") and 7 ("My heart races or palpitates when I think about getting the coronavirus"), belonging to the category of symptomatic expression of fear, resulted lower as the pandemic progressed (Table 2). STEMI patients also exhibited lower levels for item 6 than CV outpatients tested during the first wave of COVID-19 (Table 2). Furthermore, when CV patients were compared with published FCV-19S scores from an Italian general population previously tested in the first wave of COVID-19 [11], both CV outpatients and AMI patients subsequently tested showed higher values for both emotional (item 4—"I am afraid of losing my life because of the coronavirus", corresponding to a value of 2 in the general Italian population) and symptomatic fear expression (item 3—"My hands become clammy when I think about the coronavirus", corresponding to a value of 1.5 in the general Italian population).
