[ad_1]
How many new patients are there COVID-19 who are intubated every day? A number not far from double that formally reported by the Ministry of Health under the heading “places occupied in intensive care”. Unfortunately it is only an estimate, because there is no timely public survey of that important data. Almost ten months after the discovery of the first two positive cases for coronavirus in Italy that figure has never been released and probably compiled. Let me be clear: nobody cheats, nobody hides the data. However, the figure reported by the Ministry of Health – yesterday for example “more than 100” – does not say how many hospitalizations there were in the hospital area with the most serious patients, but only indicates the balance. A practical example, to understand: if we read “more than 200 patients in intensive careBut that day 100 were discharged because they healed and another 100 unfortunately died, which means that 400 new patients were hospitalized.
READ ALSO -> Red, orange and yellow regions: the new rules, what can and cannot be done
“The lack of these data is unacceptable – says Nino Cartabellotta, president of Gimbe, the foundation that processes statistics on the health system and the coronavirus – for months we have been asking for them, but we don’t even know if they exist. Every day a balance is simply communicated, which makes us understand the percentage of occupancy of intensive care places. Sure, it’s useful. But that is not enough. Paradoxically, that number is lower if many patients die. Instead, having accurate data on inputs and outputs would help to better understand the trend of the epidemic. Professor Matteo Bassetti, director of the infectious disease clinic at the San Martino hospital in Genoa, confirms: «That number is not detected and in my opinion it is a mistake. But there is another problem: there is no homogeneity between the data of the different Regions. In the different territories, criteria are used to classify a patient in intensive or subintensive care, which do not coincide. Do we just consider who is intubated? Who has assisted respiration with a helmet, how is it counted? What are the criteria for hospitalization? From Region to Region there are unequal parameters ». Well, having verified that in Italy we do not know how many patients are hospitalized each day in intensive care (and not even how many die, because the number of deaths is global), can we still make an estimate? Yes, but approximate.
According to some specialists (Professor Bassetti but also the Scientific Director of the Italian Society for Infectious Diseases, Professor Massimo Andreoni of the Tor Vergata Polyclinic in Rome) of the total number of positive cases registered each day, about 0.5 percent are hospitalized in intensive care. During the first wave, that percentage was much higher, today since we intercepted many more asymptomatic patients, it has settled between 0.3 and 0.5 percent. This can lead us to conclude that, on average, the number of admissions to the ICU is approximately double that of the rest. Let us take as a point of reference the day last week in which we registered the highest number of new positive cases in Italy: on November 7, 39,811 infected were counted, while the increase in intensive care places was set at 119, in a day in which the deaths were 425. 0.5 percent of 39,811 is roughly 200. Therefore, we are a little less than double the figure shown on the balance sheet. In summary: last week, officially, from Saturday October 31 to Saturday November 7, 841 more intensive care places were occupied, but the patients who actually ended up intubated are about 1,400-1,500. The problem is that they are only estimates, not confirmed by accurate surveys. “Instead – Cartabellotta concludes – we would need constant and certified data”.
© REPRODUCTION RESERVED
[ad_2]
