Covid deaths: age, symptoms, pathologies. Report Iss
What emerges about the Covid deaths in the latest ISS report dated 16 December 2020
There are 737 patients who died positive to Sars-CoV-2 under the age of 50, equal to 1.2% of the total 63,573.
In particular, 190 of these were under 40 years old and, except for about twenty cases, had pre-existing pathologies.
This is what is read in the new update of the document "Characteristics of patients who died positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection in Italy", prepared by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Iss) and based on data as of December 16, 2020.
Of the 63,573 deaths of SARS-CoV-2 positive people for which information is available, 42% were women and the mean age was 80 years. 37.9% took place in Lombardy, followed at a distance by Emilia Romagna (10.6%), Piedmont (8.7%) and Veneto (8%).
In a sample of almost 6,000 patients whose medical records it was possible to observe, the average number of pre-existing pathologies compared to the infection was 3.6. Hypertension is the most common chronic condition in victims: it was present in as many as 66% of the deceased, followed by diabetes (29.2%), ischemic heart disease (27%) and dementia (23.2)
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Comparison of death characteristics in the 3 periods March-May, June-August and September-November 2020
Table 1 summarizes the main characteristics of deaths with Covid-19 that occurred in the 3 periods since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020: the initial period (March-May), the second period (June-September) and the third (October-December) , although the latter is still ongoing. Overall, the data were representative of 9.6% of the deaths since the start of the pandemic; in particular, 13.3% of those who died between March and May, 27.5% of those who died between June and September and 3.7% of those who died between October and December. Over the entire period of time taken into consideration, the deaths of people with 3 or more pre-existing pathologies increase and those with fewer pathologies or none decrease: this seems to indicate that in the second and third period the deaths concern older people with a condition of pre-existing health worse than first-trimester deaths (table 1). The use of drugs is also extremely different in the three periods, with a clear reduction in the use of antivirals and an increase in the use of steroids in the second and third periods.
The distribution of the main pre-existing diseases in the different periods is presented in figure 6. The prevalence of atrial fibrillation, stroke, dementia, COPD, cancer, renal failure and obesity varies significantly in the three periods. These pathologies are more frequently diagnosed in the deceased in the second and third period than in the first.
In table 2 the durations are reported as median times (in days) in the 3 time periods considered: between the first and second period, the time elapsing from the onset of symptoms to death almost doubles, which then returns to the initial levels in the third period; the time from the onset of symptoms to the swab for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 infection decreases in the second period and remains so in the third period, as well as the time between the onset of symptoms and hospitalization in the hospital; it doubles the median duration in days from hospitalization to death between the first and second period and then returns, in the third period, to the levels of the first. These results seem to suggest a greater reactivity of the Health System testified by the greater speed in the execution of diagnostic tests and hospitalization.
Based on the indications issued by the Ministry of Health in the Circular published on 25 February 2020 (protocol 0005889-25 / 02/2020), the certification of death due to Covid-19 must be accompanied by an opinion from the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS ). For this reason, a working group dedicated to studying the causes of death of deceased patients who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection was created.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/morti-covid-eta-sintomi-patologie-report-iss/ on Fri, 25 Dec 2020 15:15:01 +0000.