“It is not true that only 2.9% of deaths attributed to Covid-19 are due to the virus”. The Higher Institute of Health (Iss) returns to the data contained in its latest report on Covid deaths, which also gave data on the high presence of chronic diseases in the victims of the pandemic, rejecting some theses circulated in the media, based on interpretations deemed incorrect by the Institute. The first clarification concerns precisely the aforementioned percentage of 2.9%, a percentage “also reported in previous editions” of the report.
In this regard, the ISS therefore clarifies its meaning and points out that 2.9% “refers to the percentage of patients who died with positivity for Sars-CoV-2 who had no other pathologies diagnosed before the infection. Moreover, the figure is confirmed by the observation made since the early stages of the pandemic and widely reported in various national and international studies and reports also by the ISS “, namely that” having pre-existing diseases is a risk factor “. In reality, what the joint Istat-Iss reports drawn up on the basis of death certificates report is another data, which shows how “Covid-19 is the directly responsible cause of death in 89% of deaths of people who test positive for the SARS test- CoV-2 », the Institute is keen to specify.
Another clarification concerns the vision according to which having previous pathologies necessarily equates to a fatal epilogue as an immediate destiny: “It is not correct – writes the ISS – to state that the pathologies found in the deceased Sars-CoV-2 positive would in any case lead to death ” in a short time’. Regardless of Covid-19, the presence of chronic diseases in the elderly population is very common. A recent Istat report indicates that only 15% would not suffer from it and that about 52% would suffer from 3 or more chronic diseases. In consideration of the fact that chronic diseases represent a risk factor for death from Covid, and that these are very common in the general population, it is not surprising the high frequency of these conditions in the Sars-CoV-2 positive deceased population “.
The concomitance of multiple chronic pathologies in the same person constitutes in itself “an element of fragility generally compensated for with appropriate therapies: contracting an infection such as Sars-CoV-2 translates into an increased risk of complications and death”, clarifies the ‘Higher Institute of Health. «Since the beginning of the pandemic, in fact – it is recalled in the note – an excess of mortality in the population has been recorded, ie a higher number of deaths than in previous years, the estimates of which are periodically reported in the joint ISS-ISTAT report. It should be noted that the pre-existing pathologies reported in the report, aimed at characterizing the characteristics of the deceased, are evaluated by a group of ISS doctors through the review of a sample of hospital medical records sent to ISS by the Regions and Autonomous Provinces, and the pathologies pre-existing ones found more frequently in the Sars-CoV-2 positive deceased are reported in table 1 of the report. The most represented are: hypertension, type 2 diabetes and dementia, very frequent pathologies in the population ».