Coronavirus, Gimbe: “Rt Index underestimated. We are in worse shape than in March” – Chronicle

Rome, November 4, 2020 – “We are in this second wave done worse than march“, is the alarm that sounds in the hearing of the Commission of Health of the Senate of Nino Cartabellotta, President of the Gimbe Foundation. “There is an involvement of the Central South, which has more fragile health services, we are facing 4-5 winter months, there is pressure from the flu epidemic, health personnel are less motivated and there are frictions between the government and authorities premises that prevent taking the most appropriate measures ”. According to President Cartabellotta the system slow to respond to virus: “15 days pass between infection and notification of cases, there is also a delay in many regions in the notification of diagnoses.”

The Cvid newsletter of November 4

Underestimated rt index

“The RT is calculated only in symptomatic cases, it is not a dependent mattress measure. But for this very reason risks of underestimating the circulation of the virus ”. Cartabellotta recalls that “RT cannot be used alone to decide the measurements, because it is late and can be underestimated, it must be evaluated together with other parameters”. And he explains: “Today we have a percentage of symptomatic cases that is around 33%, so in reality the RT does not calculate 66% of the rest of asymptomatic cases.” With this method “today we evaluate 1.7 national Rt, but if we had the possibility to include in the calculation even those who do not have symptoms, they will probably have a much higher number”.

Dpcm delay leads to unavoidable crash

“We are also behind schedule with the Dpcm, we are moving towards the total blockade because we cannot evaluate the effects of the measures introduced with the various decrees. It should be noted that even a total blockade alone allows a 50% reduction in cases in on the twenty-eighth “. There is a need for more data transparency: “The law assigns surveillance to ISS through a restricted access platform, independent investigators cannot do further investigations. The other aspect is the monitoring of the indicators of April 30, 2020, the report is not public, it appears periodically through the press but is confidential. We believe that with respect to the report it is appropriate that infections by municipality are made public, while now we have them only by province. Furthermore, the database must be accessible in an open data format, while for phase 2 follow-up, the reports and databases must be made public in an open data format, and the criteria for assigning the level risk must be explicit and reproducible “.

So “it is the general strategy that must be reviewed: in pursuit of the numbers of the day we will in any case end up reaching a generalized confinement, a concern of all because nobody wants it.”

Gimbe graph: relationship between incidence per 100,000 inhabitants and percentage increase in cases