Istat: in Italy 100 thousand more deaths from covid

In 2020 the highest number of deaths since the post-war period was recorded in Italy: in the year affected by the covid, there were over 100 thousand more deaths than the 2015-2019 average, as evidenced by the Istat-Iss report on the impact of Covid 19 epidemic on the mortality of the resident population in 2020 and in the first quarter of 2021. ” As already in the previous Istat-Iss joint reports, the evolution of total mortality in 2020 and 2021 was compared, for the same period, with the average of deaths in the five-year period 2015-2019 In 2020, the total number of deaths due to all the causes was the highest ever recorded in our country since the Second World War: 746,146 deaths, 100,526 deaths more than the 2015-2019 average (15.6% excess) “, reads Read also ” Considering the variations in the standardized mortality rates, obtained by comparing deaths to the population with the same age structure, mortality recorded a 9% increase in 2020, nationally compared to the average for the five-year period 2015-2019 ; the regions that report significantly higher increases than the national average are Piedmont, Valle D’Aosta, Lombardy and the Autonomous Province of Trento. The Central and Southern Regions do not show significant changes ”, underlines the report. based on the data, “Italy shared with Spain the first dramatic increase in deaths starting from March 2020. This increase however decreased from May 2020 until the month of and in October when there was a new phase of rapid growth in deaths. In December and in the first months of 2021, the excess mortality in Italy was below the European average and then rose slightly in March 2021 ”. ” International comparisons based on excess data alone have strong limitations as they do not take into account the different age structure of the populations. It is only through standardization by age group that the real differences in terms of mortality between countries are highlighted. A recent study published in the British Medical Journal that showed excesses in different countries by standardizing by age, showed that the excess mortality in our country was lower than that recorded in other European countries, including Spain, Belgium and United Kingdom, and in the United States ”, the report specifies. ” Analyzing the spread of the virus in the first months of 2021, the provinces with the highest incidence rate were those of the north-eastern side: Bologna, Gorizia, Forlì-Cesena , Udine, Rimini, Bolzano / Bozen. The incidence appears to be very low in some provinces of Sardinia (South Sardinia, Oristano, Sassari), in some provinces of Calabria (Catanzaro, Cosenza, Crotone) and Sicily (Ragusa, Enna, Agrigento) ”.