Intelligence dossier: "Infections in Italy underestimated by 50 percent"

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January 29, 2021 "Infections in Italy underestimated by 50%": this is what is stated in an intelligence dossier delivered to the resigning Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, according to what "la Repubblica" reports today.

According to the 007, the new daily positives would actually be 40-50 percent more than those officially detected.

"The total number of infected people is underestimated due to the drop in the number of tampons which occurred in mid-November 2020", reads the document.

Analysts, "Repubblica" reports, therefore launch two alarms: the epidemiological curve is not bending downwards as much as the bulletins issued by the Ministry of Health attest;

the data is currently unreliable and therefore difficult to analyze and use to take adequate measures to contain the virus.

"Observing the intensive care in the final part of the year, it can be deduced that there was a recovery phase of the epidemic in mid-December" continues the dossier.

"A recovery that was neither detected nor traced by national numbers due to the few tests carried out in that period".

According to intelligence, therefore, shortly before Christmas the curve started to rise again and the proof lies in the fact that life-threatening patients in hospitals have not decreased as expected: the figure has remained stable, oscillating around 2,580 units. .

We did not notice the rise in the curve because the opposite was said in the ministerial bulletins, namely that from the peak of November 13 (+ 40,902 infected) onwards the count of new positivity has progressively decreased, except for a brief jolt around 25 December.

The statistical mess - observes "Repubblica" - revolves around swabs.

In the week between 11 and 17 November, a million and a half were tried, the highest number recorded to date.

From that moment, however, the tests began to decrease, reaching 868 thousand in the week between 23 and 29 December, only to jump to 1.4 million from 13 January onwards due to the inclusion, in the count, of the swabs rapid antigenic.

Before, only the molecular ones were valid for the purposes of the calculation, then the Ministry of Health also admitted the others.

But this is the passage that, according to the intelligence dossier, has complicated the picture, generating chaos.

"The introduction of rapid tests made it impossible to compare with past historical series. Some Regions, moreover, do not distinguish between the molecular and the rapid, and this has evident repercussions on the calculation of all values, including the positive ratio / tampons ".

The report, they argue, should be reviewed, separating the rapid and, above all, removing those made to confirm the healing.

"It is only the first diagnosis swabs that photograph the real epidemiological situation, and since mid-November we have seen a sharp decline in this type".

To date, the confirmation tests would be 65 percent of the total: too many not to significantly alter the representation of the contagion curve.

The infections are underestimated by 50% as our Intelligence says?

"This is possible. In surveillance systems there is often a share that can be underestimated in the cases that are normally diagnosed and reported".

To say it on Radio Anch'io on Rai radio 1 is Paola Stefanelli, director of the Department of Preventable Vaccine Diseases - ISS - Istituto Superiore di Sanita '.