Overestimation of deaths from Covid-19? The doubts of prof. de Vita
Deaths from Covid-19. Numbers, comparisons and analyzes
The number of deaths from Covid-19 may have been underestimated in 2020 and overestimated in 2021. This is the thesis of the latest video by Professor Roy de Vita , head of the Plastic Surgery division of the Regina Elena Cancer Institute of Rome. The doctor – who has been following and analyzing the pandemic trend for some time – carries out his analysis starting from the Istat report “ Impact of the Covid-19 epidemic on the total mortality of the resident population ”.
What is submerged mortality
The professor. de Vita, from his Instagram profile, starts by analyzing the "submerged mortality" in the first period of the Covid-19 epidemic in Italy. To calculate submerged mortality, the chief physician suggests taking as a reference a period of time in which no wars were fought and no epidemics and comparing it with the period under analysis. The difference, the delta between the two values, corresponds to the submerged mortality or the deaths attributable to the epidemic.
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The underestimation of deaths from Covid-19 in the first wave
During the first wave of the Covid-19 epidemic there would have been an underestimation of deaths caused by the virus. “Let's examine the five-year period 2015-2019 – says prof. de Vita in his video -. In the period March-May, taken as a reference, the data suggest that we should have had 109,520 deaths instead we had 156,429 , that is 46,909 more. In that period, however, only 27,938 were declared dead from Covid, the submerged mortality would be 18,971 deaths which represent 40% of submerged mortality to be attributed to the epidemic ". Extending the analysis to the whole of 2020 and not just to the three hottest months of the first wave, the data changes significantly. "In 2020, the total 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 the Istat report “ Impact of the Covid-19 epidemic on the total mortality of the resident population ”. "Last January, once in possession of the data for the whole year, the total variance on an annual basis settled and reduced to 25.4% because the excess mortality in 2020 settled at 100,526, of which 75,891 officially attributed to Covid-19 – continues the primary -. 24,635 are missing from the appeal, 25.4% ".
The alleged overestimation of the third wave
According to the de Vita analysis, things would change starting from 2021. "In January 2015-2019 an average of 68,324 people died, while in January 2021 70,538 died, therefore 2,214 more but the deaths attributed to Covid were , for the month of January 2021, there were 12,527 with a surplus, not a minus, of 10,313 deaths – says the professor -. For the first time we can say that the number of deaths declared for Covid is absolutely overestimated by a value of 82% ".
What Istat says
The data referred to by prof. de Vita are not, however, real data but estimates . And Istat clearly states this in its report. "The effects of the second epidemic wave on mortality continue in 2021. For the month of January , 70,538 deaths are estimated , 2,000 more than the average for the same month in the 2015-2019 period and 8,500 more than in January 2020", reads in the report. Moving forward, the Institute of Statistics also tries to find a reason for this deviation. ”The absolute value of Covid-19 deaths (12,527) reported by the Surveillance is higher than the excess calculated for January 2021 – writes Istat -. This phenomenon is probably attributable to the reduction , compared to previous years, in mortality from causes other than COVID-19, such as influenza, which thanks to the distancing measures had a lower incidence in the last season ”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/sovrastima-dei-morti-per-covid-19-i-dubbi-del-prof-de-vita/ on Tue, 30 Mar 2021 10:27:46 +0000.