Estimating the severity of COVID-19: Evidence from the Italian epicenter

Paolo Buonanno, Sergio Galletta and Marcello Puca

PLOS ONE, 2020, vol. 15, issue 10, 1-13

Abstract: We provide results on the level of COVID-19 excess mortality in the Italian region of Lombardy and in the province of Bergamo using official and original data sources. Since February 2020 Lombardy and in particular the province of Bergamo have been severely hit by the novel COVID-19 infectious disease. Combining official statistics, retrospective data and original data (i.e., obituaries and death notices) we provide a tentative estimate of the number of deaths either directly or indirectly, associated with COVID-19 as well as the total number of persons infected. Our findings suggest that the reported number of deaths attributable to COVID-19 identified by public authorities accounts only for one half of the observed excess mortality between March 2020 and previous years.

Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0239569 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 39569&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0239569

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0239569

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().