ITALY
There is growing evidence that the death toll and infection rate figures being reported daily by Italian officials may be much lower than the reality.
Since the coronavirus outbreak began in Italy in late February, the public has been relying on official government data for a picture of how many deaths, cases, and recoveries there have been in each part of the country, and how things are changing.
Italy’s Department for Civil Protection releases these statistics daily at around 6pm. The data is then pored over by experts worldwide, looking for evidence that Italy’s quarantine measures are containing the spread as hoped – and that other countries can confidently follow its example.
But a growing number of Italian experts have now said these numbers may not be reliable.
“For sure, the figures are wrong,” said Matteo Villa, a researcher at the Italian Institute for Political Studies and author of a a new study (in Italian) titled ”Coronavirus: Lethality in Italy, between appearance and reality”
He that the death toll may have been underestimated by up to 6,000, or a third of the official total.
https://www.thelocal.it/20200403/whats-the-problem-with-italys-official-coronavirus-statistics
Wow...well, that's certainly interesting info, about Italy death rate, from your link....
..."It is plausible that deaths are underestimated," Higher Health Institute president Silvio Brusaferro stated. "We report deaths that are signalled with a positive swab. Many other deaths are not tested with a swab." The possible scale of the disparity showed up this week when death records for the month of March from different years were compared. The data showed a very large difference between the number of Covid-19 deaths reported by authorites, and the total death toll in different Italian regions....
