I’ll explain truths and falsehoods about Covid, deaths and hospitals
What Roy De Vita, head of the Plastic Surgery Division of the Cancer Institute of Rome Regina Elena, said about Covid, deaths, emergency rooms and hospitals
Is Covid-19 as aggressive as March-May? Should the growing number of infections really cause us to worry? What is the reality based on numbers and what happens in (nearly saturated) hospitals?
To answer these questions is Roy De Vita, plastic surgeon, head of the Division of Plastic Surgery of the Cancer Institute of Rome Regina Elena.
All the details.
STAYING BEHIND THE NUMBER OF INFECTIONS IS MISLEADING
Let's start with a consideration. “Unfortunately at this moment if you are not a catastrophist you are classified as a denier and this is not good. I'm not a denier at all and I limit myself to reading the official data provided by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità ”, said Roy De Vita in the direct Instagram.
"Keeping up with the infections is misleading," he added.
THE NUMBER OF DEATHS
What data could give us knowledge of what is happening? That of the number of deaths from Covid. “The data regarding the deaths give a precise and reliable picture”, explains De Vita, rattling off the numbers of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità. "In the quarter March-May there were 34,225 deaths, in the quarter June-August 1392 and in the two months September October 1842. In an almost double period, 5 months against 3, therefore, between June and October we had 9.5% of deaths compared to those between March and May ".
MIDDLE AGE
The age of the deceased patients is also important to understand the aggressiveness of Covid-19. De Vita claims, on ISS data, that "the average age of deceased patients is 80 years, while the average age of infected patients is 51 years, lower than 30 years".
“As of October 28, there were 1.1% of deaths in patients under the age of 50 and 0.25 were between the ages of 0-40,” explains de Vita.
DEATH AND PREVIOUS PATHOLOGIES
It's still. A factor to be analyzed in order to understand Covid-19 disease are deaths caused by previous pathologies.
“3.5% of the deceased had no pathology, 13.2% had only one comorbidity, 19.3 had two and 64% had three or more. The most frequent of the concomitant pathologies is arterial hypertension, followed by diabetes ”, explains the surgeon.
LACK OF MEDICINE IN THE TERRITORY
“This second wave has been monitored much more than the first, with a number of swabs often 10 times higher. The knowledge of this huge number of positives is certainly greater and this data causes fear ”, explains De Vita, adding that“ there is no local medicine ”and“ everyone goes to the emergency room for a cough ”.
THE MEDICAL-LEGAL COMPLAINTS
Then, says the Regina Elena plastic surgeon, there is also another issue that must be taken into account: the medico-legal complaints, "which has now become a national sport".
"Which doctor sends you away even with few symptoms from the hospital, with the risk, not to say the certainty, that the patient will report him at the slightest setback", explains De Vita. "There are already thousands of complaints to those who for a few days have been defined as heroes," adds the surgeon.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/vi-spiego-verita-e-falsita-su-covid-morti-pronto-soccorso-e-ospedali/ on Sat, 07 Nov 2020 09:10:28 +0000.