Excess Deaths and Hospital Admissions for COVID-19 Due to a Late Implementation of the Lockdown in Italy

Raffaele Palladino, Jordy Bollon, Luca Ragazzoni and Francesco Barone-Adesi
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Raffaele Palladino: Department of Primary Care and Public Health, Imperial College, London W6 8RP, UK
Jordy Bollon: Department of Translational Medicine, Università del Piemonte Orientale, 28100 Novara, Italy
Luca Ragazzoni: Department of Translational Medicine, Università del Piemonte Orientale, 28100 Novara, Italy
Francesco Barone-Adesi: Department of Translational Medicine, Università del Piemonte Orientale, 28100 Novara, Italy

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 16, 1-6

Abstract: In Italy, the COVID-19 epidemic curve started to flatten when the health system had already exceeded its capacity, raising concerns that the lockdown was indeed delayed. The aim of this study was to evaluate the health effects of late implementation of the lockdown in Italy. Using national data on the daily number of COVID-19 cases, we first estimated the effect of the lockdown, employing an interrupted time series analysis. Second, we evaluated the effect of an early lockdown on the trend of new cases, creating a counterfactual scenario where the intervention was implemented one week in advance. We then predicted the corresponding number of intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, non-ICU admissions, and deaths. Finally, we compared results under the actual and counterfactual scenarios. An early implementation of the lockdown would have avoided about 126,000 COVID-19 cases, 54,700 non-ICU admissions, 15,600 ICU admissions, and 12,800 deaths, corresponding to 60% (95%CI: 55% to 64%), 52% (95%CI: 46% to 57%), 48% (95%CI: 42% to 53%), and 44% (95%CI: 38% to 50%) reduction, respectively. We found that the late implementation of the lockdown in Italy was responsible for a substantial proportion of hospital admissions and deaths associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; lockdown; evaluation; late implementation; healthcare; health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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