Covid, about 60 thousand dead in Italy and not 36 thousand in September 2020: the study

The victims of Covid in Italy as of 9 September 2020 would be between 59 thousand and 62 thousand, many more than the official number of 36 thousand deaths. This is what emerges from a study by the University of California, Berkeley, and published in ‘Nature Communications’. The researchers conducted a series of analyzes on the overall mortality data of cities in Italy, comparing the mortality of the population in 2020 with previous years, to estimate mortality from Covid-19. The data obtained from them are higher than the official ones at the beginning of last September. The percentage of the population died is 0.29% in the most affected region, Lombardy, and 0.57% in the most affected province, Bergamo. By combining Italy’s reported Sars-Cov-2 test positivity rates with estimates of death rates on the Diamond Princess cruise ship, one of the first Covid-19 outbreaks at the start of the pandemic, the researchers estimate a rate infection of 29% in Lombardy and 72% in Bergamo.