As of Tuesday, the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in Italy has surpassed 100,000. The official number of coronavirus victims is over 11.5 thousand people. However, it is virtually impossible to determine the exact number of people killed. Some claim that the official figures are underestimated by a factor of three to four, as thousands of people infected with the virus continue to get sick and die at home without being tested or diagnosed. Others, however, believe that the number of deaths is greatly exaggerated because all patients who died in the hospital after testing positive for Covid-19 are included in the official statistics – which does not necessarily mean that their deaths were caused specifically by the coronavirus. By some estimates, only one in eight people who officially die from Covid-19 actually die directly from the virus. Both points of view are supported by expert opinion, both are supported by relevant statistics, and both have every right to exist. So how do you calculate the actual number of epidemic victims?
Nembro is a small town in the province of Bergamo in Lombardy, which was the hardest hit by the Covid-19 outbreak.
Italian doctors about the coronavirus epidemic in the country. It is located about 60 km northeast of Milan. The population of the town is about 11.5 thousand people; the official number of victims of the coronavirus epidemic at the end of last week was 31. Thirty-one people is not a lot. According to the mayor of the town, Claudio Cancelli, about 35-40 people usually die in Nembo every year from January to March. In just three incomplete months, through March 24, the local government has already issued 158 death certificates to residents this year. This is 123 more than the average for the same period in the previous five years. Four times.
This is even more than the total for the entire previous year: in 2019, a total of 120 residents died in Nembro. Stunned by this statistic, Claudio Cancelli requested similar figures from the mayors of neighboring cities. The results were even more shocking. In Chernusko-sul-Navilio (population – 33 thousand people) and Pesaro (95 thousand), the total number of residents who died from January to March exceeds the official statistics of coronavirus deaths by five to six times. The situation is not much better in the provincial capital, Bergamo, with a population of 122,000. From March 1 to March 24, 446 residents died there, 4.5 times the average for the last five years. At the same time, the official number of coronavirus victims for the same period was 136. This means that the actual mortality rate in the city was almost 3.5 times higher. Even if the average number of deaths since the beginning of the year (98) is added to the number of deceased patients diagnosed with Covid-19 (136), the result is still half of the actual statistics. Why is there such a huge gap? It is unlikely that such a significant discrepancy in numbers can be explained solely by inadequate testing of the sick. It is quite obvious that any large-scale epidemic kills not only directly but also indirectly. The burden on the healthcare system is growing so rapidly that it simply cannot cope with the influx of seriously ill patients. The average waiting time for an ICU bed in Italian hospitals is currently about three hours. During this time, a patient has every chance of adding to the sad statistics – whether they have a virus, bacterial pneumonia, kidney stones or a heart attack.
At the same time, the number of doctors is decreasing, which also leads to additional casualties in the conditions of a large-scale epidemic. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak in Italy, only more than 40 hospital workers have officially died from the coronavirus. In total, more than 5,000 doctors, nurses, paramedics and other healthcare workers have been diagnosed with Covid-19. All were forced into quarantine or became patients themselves. How many potentially curable patients ultimately lost their lives as a result? Especially when you consider that there are a lot of older people in Italy: almost one in four people in the country is over 65. In such circumstances, it is appropriate to ask how many people have died not directly from the coronavirus, but from it in general.
We will soon know the answer to this question. The largest analytical agency in Italy, In.Twig, has already begun to collect and study the monthly mortality statistics of all 243 municipalities in the province of Bergamo over the last five years, in order to compare them with the figures for the current year and to assess the true scale of the humanitarian disaster in the country. The data collected [about half of the province’s population], processed with scientific methods, confirm the sensational statements made by the mayors of the cities in the province of Bergamo,” said Professor Aldo Cristadoro of the Department of Digital Sociological Methods at the University of Bergamo in an interview with the regional newspaper “L’Eco di Bergamo” on Tuesday.