Total COVID-19 Mortality in Italy: Excess Mortality and Age Dependence through Time-Series Analysis release_rnkhutttwnfmzmgpwjh43jpfm4

by Chirag Modi, Vanessa Boehm, Simone Ferraro, George Stein, Uros Seljak

Released as a post by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

2020  

Abstract

We perform a counterfactual time series analysis of 2020 weekly total mortality data reported from towns in Italy, with data from the previous five years as control. We find an excess mortality that is correlated in time with the COVID-19 reported death rate time series, the latter lagging in time by about one week. Relative to the reported deaths by COVID-19,the overall excess mortality is significantly higher for many of the regions in Italy, and its age distribution is skewed towards people above 80 years of age. We estimate that the number of COVID-19 deaths in Italy is 47,000 +/- 2000 as of April 11 2020, more than a factor of 2 higher than the official number. We estimate that the Population Fatality Rate (PFR), defined as the ratio of COVID-19 related deaths to the total population. It has reached 0.2% in the most affected region of Lombardia as of April 11, and 0.4% in the most affected province of Bergamo, which is also a lower bound to the Infection Fatality Rate (IFR). We estimate PFR as a function of age, finding a steep age dependence: in Lombardia (Bergamo province) 0.5% (1.1%) of total population in age group 70-79 died, 1.3% (3%) in age group 80-89, and 3% (7%) in the age group above 90. We combine this with the IFR estimate from the Princess Diamond cruise ship for ages above 70 to estimate the age dependent IFR which range from below 0.1% for ages below 50 years to 15% for ages above 90 years, with an overall IFR of 1.1% for Lombardia. Combining with the PFR, we estimate the infection rates (IR) of regions in Italy which peaks in Lombardia at 21% (10%-37%, 95% c.l.), and for the province of Bergamo at 48% (24%- 85%, 95% c.l.), corresponding to 2 Million and 0.5 Million infected people respectively. Our code and data is available at https://github.com/bccp/covid-19-data, and will be updated as situation evolves.
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Date   2020-04-20
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