Tag: ISTAT

COVID-19

Classification of weekly provincial overall age and sex-specific mortality patterns during the CoVID epidemics in Italy

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Publication date: 21/07/2020 – E&P Code: repo.epiprev.it/1931
Authors: Nataša Kejžar1, Lara Lusa1,2Sottomesso alla peer review sulla rivista Epidemiologia&Prevenzione

Abstract: OBJECTIVES: to provide a time-varying classification of the Italian provinces based on the weekly age and sex-specific relative risks (RR) for overall mortality, obtained comparing the number of deaths from 13 weeks from the beginning of the CoVID epidemics, with the average number of deaths from the same period in 2015-19.
DESIGN: population overall mortality data provided by the Italian National Statistical Office (ISTAT).
SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Italian residents 60 years or older from 7357/7904 Italian municipalities. For the included municipalities the number of deaths from any cause from January 1st till May 30th was available for each day of the 2015-2020 period. Data were stratified by sex, 4 age categories (60-69, 70-79, 80-89, 90+), week and province.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: province and sex-specific weekly RR curves (age category vs RR), obtained for 13 weeks between February 26th and May 30th; excess mortality; time-varying/weekly classification of provinces.
RESULTS: our results provide a weekly classification of the Italian provinces based on their RR curves in 5 groups, 2 of which had high and very high excess mortality during the epidemics. Most of the provinces that appeared at least once in the highest-risk group are neighboring provinces in the northern regions of Lombardia, Emilia Romagna, Piemonte, and Marche (in central Italy), where most of the CoVID cases and deaths were identified. A subanalysis of the provinces with high-incidence of the virus identified three groups, different in the magnitude of the overall RR, but also in the shape of their RR curves, which varied markedly also between men and women and most importantly in the highest-risk group.
CONCLUSIONS: our study gives timely reanalysis of the Istat data at weekly level and provides a classification of the geographical and temporal characteristics of the excess mortality in the Italian provinces during the CoVID epidemics. Our results facilitate the presentation of the spatio-temporal mortality patterns of the epidemics and provide evidence of high heterogeneity in the group of provinces that were defined as high-risk groups by others, based on their geographical position or on the observed spread of the virus.

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Comparison of 2020 mortality to 2015-19: geographical distribution of the permutation-based p-values based on included population
COVID-19

Identifying the Italian provinces with increased mortality during CoVID epidemics using the data made available by Istat – a methodological challenge

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Publication date: 02/05/2020 – E&P Code: repo.epiprev.it/1446
Authors: Lara Lusa1

Abstract: During the CoVID epidemics in Italy it became of great interest to investigate the number of occurred deaths, regardless of their confirmed CovID positivity. To address this problem, on April 1st the Italian National Statistical Office (Istat, Istituto Nazionale di Statistica) published the data of a selected group of Italian municipalities, making available the number of deaths observed on a daily basis from January 1st to March 21st 2020; data were stratified by gender and in class categories. To make comparisons with the previous years possible, the daily stratified number od deaths that occurred from 2015 to 2019 in the same period were also published. Later, the data were updated weekly and at the time of writing three data releases were available, which included the number of deaths up to April 4th. Istat clarified that only municipalities with at least 20% mortality increase compared to 2015-19 were included in the dataset.

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COVID-19

I dati ISTAT sulla mortalità a Marzo 2020 presentano un bias di selezione?

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Publication date: 10/04/2020 – E&P Code: repo.epiprev.it/1123
Authors: Corrado Magnani1, Dario Gregori2

Abstract. Il 1′ aprile ISTAT ha dato la disponibilità dei dati di mortalità a livello comunale per il periodo 1 – 21 Marzo per 1.084 comuni, senza però fornire dettagli sul criterio di selezione. Abbiamo subito utilizzato questi dati, confidando che non vi fossero altri criteri di selezione oltre a quelli operativi richiesti per la disponibilità tempestiva dell’informazione.
Le informazioni a livello comunale sono state ampiamente usate, non solo da noi, per rispondere ad alcuni quesiti che riteniamo di estremo rilievo, in particolare per quanto riguarda la variazione della mortalità in eccesso rispetto a quanto attribuito ufficialmente all’epidemia, anche con proiezioni a livello regionale e nazionale. Nei 1084 comuni del campione dal 1 al 21 marzo 2020 si sono osservati 16.126 decessi mentre l’atteso sulla base della media 2015-2019 era di 7.843,4 morti. Da questo si rileva l’importanza di poter usare questi valori per stimare l’eccesso di mortalità a livello regionale e nazionale.
Nulla di tutto questo è fattibile correttamente poiché il campione è stato selezionato in modo distorto, con un chiaro bias di selezione.

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