COVID-19 in Italy: An Analysis of Death Registry Data.

ABSTRACT:

Background

There are still many unknowns about COVID-19. We do not know its exact mortality rate nor the speed through which it spreads across communities. This lack of evidence complicates the design of appropriate response policies.

Methods

We source daily death registry data for 4100 municipalities in Italy's north and match them to Census data. We augment the dataset with municipality-level data on a host of co-factors of COVID-19 mortality, which we exploit in a differences-in-differences regression model to analyze COVID-19-induced mortality.

Results

We find that COVID-19 killed more than 0.15% of the local population during the first wave of the epidemic. We also show that official statistics vastly underreport this death toll, by about 60%. Next, we uncover th

SUBMITTER: Ciminelli G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7543414 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature