Assessing the heterogeneity of the impact of COVID-19 incidence on all-cause excess mortality among healthcare districts in Lombardy, Italy, to evaluate the local response to the pandemic: an ecological study.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

The fragmentation of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic at national, regional and local levels is a possible source of variability in the impact of the pandemic on society. This study aims to assess how much of this variability affected the burden of COVID-19, measured in terms of all-cause 2020 excess mortality.

Design

Ecological retrospective study.

Setting

Lombardy region of Italy, 2015-2020.

Outcome measures

We evaluated the relationship between the intensity of the epidemics and excess mortality, assessing the heterogeneity of this relationship across the 91 districts after adjusting for relevant confounders.

Results

The epidemic intensity was quantified as the COVID-19 hospitalisations per 1000 inhabitants. Five confounders were ident

SUBMITTER: Paganuzzi M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10860029 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature