The dead in Italy in 2020 – BUTAC

The news cycle is clearly monopolized by the pandemic, and a new topic of debate is the number of deaths due to the new coronavirus. Aside from the legitimate debate on the method of counting the deaths caused directly or indirectly by the virus, there seems to be no way to prevent some from starting off with post and sharing campaigns, claiming that the deaths are many less or many more .

Istat published a series of data on April 1 partial on deaths in Italy that can be very useful, but let’s start immediately with some considerations:

• The data refer to all the deaths are not just those for COVID-19.
• The data disseminated are partial, they refer to 1084 municipalities out of the 5866 that are part of the ANPR (National Registry of Resident Population) system.
• The municipalities that are part of the ANPR are approximately 75% of the Italian municipalities.
• The data refer only to the “verified” municipalities, that is the municipalities with a number of deaths which, in the period 1 January-21 March 2020, was greater than or equal to 10 units and which in March 2020 presented, compared to the corresponding average for the five-year period 2015-2019, an increase in mortality of at least 20%.

Here you will find the ISTAT explanatory note. Obviously these data will be updated as soon as the Institute has collected and verified the other municipalities.

So what do the data tell us so far? Being partial data one must be careful to draw conclusions, also because the contagion is not homogeneous on the Italian territory. We will also update this article from time to time to keep you updated on the data.

Overall figure

The simplest data is obtained by comparing the totals of the years from 2015 to 2020 from 1 January to 21 March. You can find the file here.

• 2015: 34339
• 2016: 30411
• 2017: 35018
• 2018: 33520
• 2019: 33575
• 2020: 40244

Average therefore of the municipalities so far verified from 2015 to 2019 and of 33372. The 2020 total shows a major increase. As you can see the total can have significant variations, just look at the difference between 2016 and 2017 which is in fact slightly less than the difference between 2017 and 2020. This means that with partial data no definitive conclusions can be drawn, but the trend is evident. The note linked above highlights a very important thing for the evaluation of the data collected:

The increase in overall mortality observed in March represents a sharp turnaround in the trend of daily mortality in the months of January and February 2020. In fact, in the first two months of the new year, the deaths had been less than the average number observed in the same period in 2015-2019. A phenomenon that can be considered attributable to the reduced impact of seasonal risk factors (climatic conditions and flu epidemics) in the first two months of the year. This explains why, considering the complex of deaths from 1st January to 21st March 2020, in different municipalities
there is no increase, but rather a decrease in the number of deaths, compared to the average figure for the same period of the years 2015-2019.

In March, therefore, the increase compared to previous years is concentrated, giving support to the thesis that the increase is attributable to the coronavirus infection that exploded between February and March 2020.

Specific data

However, what can be very useful and much more explicit at the moment are the data of the individual municipalities, where in some cases the increase is extraordinary. You can find the data here, the file is not perfect given that the percentage variation is not correctly marked for all the municipalities, but if we consider the “red areas” the difference is important:

• Bergamo: year 2019 101 dead, year 2020 398 dead.
• Codogno: year 2019 15 dead, year 2020 87 dead.
• Brescia: year 2019 134 dead, year 2020 281 dead.

There are also municipalities where very few deaths were seen in 2019 and completely different numbers in 2020. Let’s always take as an example the areas we know most affected:

• Gorle (BG): year 2019 1 dead, year 2020 23 dead.
• Castiglione D’adda (LO): year 2019 3 dead, year 2020 43 dead.
• Alzano Lombardo (BG): year 2019 8 dead, year 2020 83 dead

Looking at the data of the municipalities in the province of Bergamo, Cremona, Brescia and Lodi we can understand why hospitals have had difficulties, some percentage increases are enormous. We must also keep in mind that the last ten days of March are missing, so the real situation is in all probability even more serious.

Conclusion?

At the moment what we can say with certainty is that the increase in deaths in the most affected areas is significant: the verified data show that there has been an anomalous number of deaths compared to last year, and the fact that the increase was concentrated in March could only have been due to the epidemic due to the coronavirus. Obviously we need more data, and more specific, and ISTAT will certainly provide them.

As soon as official updates are published we will analyze them to give you more precise information.

Remember to love with your heart, but for everything else use your head.

neilperri @ butac.it

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