In a study released today, the National Institute of Social Security (Italian social security) indicates that, between March and April, 156,429 deaths were recorded, which represents 46,909 more than expected, taking into account the average found in the same months between 2015 and 2019.
Now, the number of deaths declared by the Italian civil protection – balance announced daily by the authorities – was 27,938 for the period between March and April.
Social security questions about the difference of 18,971 deaths and considers the method of quantifying deaths provided by civil protection to be “unreliable”.
“Bearing in mind that the number of deaths has been stable over time, we can, with the necessary prudence, attribute to the current epidemic a large part of the deaths registered in the last two months”, says the institute.
Social security considers that, “in order to better understand the true consequences of the epidemic, it is necessary to wait for the total eradication of the virus, with an effective vaccine or antiviral therapy”.
Officially, the pandemic killed 32,486 people in Italy, the third most affected country. Of these, 26,715 died in the Lombardy region.
According to a balance sheet by the AFP news agency, more than 328,000 people died and five million are infected worldwide.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December in Wuhan, a city in China.
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