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. 2022 Apr 26;113(2):e2022021.
doi: 10.23749/mdl.v113i2.13108.

Excess total mortality during the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy: updated estimates indicate persistent excess in recent months

Gianfranco Alicandro  1 , Giuseppe Remuzzi  2 , Stefano Centanni  3 , Alberto Gerli  4 , Carlo La Vecchia  5
Affiliations

Excess total mortality during the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy: updated estimates indicate persistent excess in recent months

Gianfranco Alicandro et al. Med Lav. .

Abstract

Background: New releases of daily mortality data are available in Italy; the last containing data up to 31 January 2022. This study revises previous estimates of the excess mortality in Italy during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Methods: Excess mortality was estimated as the difference between the number of registered deaths and the expected deaths. Expected deaths in March-December 2020, January-December 2021 and January 2022 were estimated separately by sex, through an over-dispersed Poisson regression model using mortality and population data for the period 2011-2019. The models included terms for calendar year, age group, a smooth function of week of the year and the natural logarithm of the population as offset term.

Results: We estimated 99,334 excess deaths (+18.8%) between March and December 2020, 61,808 deaths (+9.5%) in 2021 and 4143 deaths (+6.1%) in January 2022. Over the whole pandemic period, 13,039 excess deaths (+10.2%) were estimated in the age group 25-64 years with most of the excess observed among men [10,025 deaths (+12.6%) among men and 3014 deaths (+6.3%) among women].

Conclusions: Up to 31 January 2022, over 165 thousand excess deaths were estimated in Italy, of these about 8% occurred among the working age population. Despite high vaccination uptake, excess mortality is still observed in recent months.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Monthly trend in percentage differences between observed and expected total deaths in Italy in the age group 25-64 (Panel a), 65-79 (Panel b), 80+ (Panel c) and at all ages (Panel d), by sex. Period: March 2020-January 2022.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Number of Covid-19 cases (bars) registered in Italy between March 2020 and January 2022, estimated difference in total mortality and number of COVID deaths registered in the same period (lines).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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