An article translated from Il Giornale.it
Covid, one million Lombards infected "Cases maybe 100 times more than registered"
One million cases in Lombardy, out of ten million inhabitants, this could be the order of magnitude of the epidemic in our region, out of a total of 5 million infected Italians.
"The cases of Covid-19 in Lombardy, and in Italy in general, are at least 10, but probably 100 times higher" than those of the official bulletins that "refer mainly to severe patients who have come to the attention of hospitals". These are the results of a Doxa survey coordinated by the group of Carlo La Vecchia and Eva Negri, the epidemiologists of the State University that estimates "the submerged" of the coronavirus epidemic on the national territory between March 27 and 30.
According to official data, at the end of March there were 105,792 cases and 12,442 deaths nationwide, and 43,208 cases and 7,199 deaths at regional level. However, the actual figures are uncertain: the cases recorded in Italy essentially include hospital admissions, plus a small number of positive swabs performed non-systematically. To estimate the number of possible cases, a series of questions on Covid-19 related symptoms (such as fever, headache, cold, cough, gastrointestinal disorders) have been included. The survey is based on a sample of 1,000 individuals, representative of the general Italian population between 18 and 85 years of age in terms of sex, age, geographical area and socio-economic conditions. Of these, 169 were residents in Lombardy. The data, collected using the Cawi methodology (computer assisted web interviews), refer to questions asked to citizens regarding their condition in the three weeks prior to the survey.
It therefore seems that in the last three weeks 18.3% of Lombards reported Covid-19 symptoms, while 3% reported a fever of over 38.5 degrees, which is much higher than in the rest of the country. In Italy 14.4% of subjects reported symptoms and 1.5% had a high fever. Those most affected? Women, young people, smokers and people with higher education.
Some of the symptoms described, however, are not related to Covid-19. Although the seasonal flu period ended by 7 March, some of the symptoms reported may be related to other non-specific (viral) conditions, experts explain. It is possible, however, that most of the symptoms and most of the fever episodes above 38.5 degrees in March are due to the virus. Even assuming that only half of the symptoms reported are attributable to Covid-19, about 10 percent of the population in Lombardy and 8 percent of the population in Italy would have been infected in the three weeks preceding the data collection. The count in absolute numbers is soon done, although the figure can be doubled assuming that most of the symptoms similar to Covid-19 are actually related to the disease.
The data therefore indicate that even ignoring asymptomatic cases, the Covid-19 epidemic has affected a certainly larger slice of the population by an order of magnitude, and perhaps even two, than recorded cases. "We arrive to estimate that in Italy there could be 5, 10 or even 20 million infected if the asymptomatic cases were very numerous - explains La Vecchia - The not encouraging aspect is that in all the estimates made we are still far from achieving natural immunity" and that "it will still take time to reach zero cases".