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Yesterday came important news from the pandemic front: for the first time since the appearance of Covid-19, Lombardy has lost the scepter of the most affected Italian region and has passed it to Campania. In fact, yesterday there were 94,089 positives in Campania and 85,066 in Lombardy. Veneto is now in second place with 88,132 cases and Lazio in third, slightly down from 87,318 from 88,193 on Friday.
The novelty is the daughter of the characteristics of the second wave “made in Italy” which, unlike that of March-April, did not affect only the North.
But this very event raises a question of strategies: if in March we closed all of Italy because the hospital system in the south would not have been maintained, how are the southern regions doing now?
A full mapping is still impossible but one thing is already for sure: you can breathe a half sigh of relief. In fact, despite the enormous anguish registered in November by hospitals across Italy (on the 14th Bolzano doctors launched a dramatic appeal not to go to emergency rooms), the medical-hospital system of the South has stagnated miraculously and in some cases even doing better than the north.
BETWEEN NEWS AND MIRAGAS
The evidence? The former are offered by some tables published on the website of Agenas, the National Agency for Regional Health Services. It is said that of the total people affected by Covid, the people who end up in the hospital are much fewer in the South than in the North. It is a very positive fact because around the world, low hospitalization is considered a good management measure, especially during a pandemic that triggers the number of people who need complex treatments in a short time. In Campania only 2.1% of the positives are hospitalized, while Lombardy and Piedmont exceed 7%. Veneto, Puglia and Sicily fluctuate between 3 and 4%. Good data was obtained despite the fact that Campania has 15,000 fewer health workers than Veneto, which is also less populated. And it’s not that southern hospitals have escaped the Covid-19 storm this time. In Puglia, in the first wave, admissions were at most 650 (April 3), today they are 1,600. Lombardy, on the other hand, had a second wave much lighter than the first with a maximum of 8,360 hospitalizations (November 24) compared to the hyperbolic 12,000 on April 14.
What is the truth behind these figures? The doubt that they are “statistical mirages” is strong. “You can only make a balance when the bowls are stopped – answers the epidemiologist Pier Luigi Lopalco, who has been the Health Councilor of Puglia for some weeks – However, in the midst of a thousand problems and despite the fact that the South begins with a 25/30% of the North, the Sanitario del Sur network holds up because this summer we put hay in the farmhouse. I like to say that in October I was more worried than today “.
Lopalco is fighting a stubborn resistance to the virus in its Puglia that has brought those infected from 42,500 on December 4 to 51,200 yesterday. The hospitalized, however, are stationed: there were 1,596 on December 4 and 1,587 today. “The fact is that with us health is reduced to the essential – explains Lopalco – In other places sometimes the luxury of unnecessary hospitalizations escapes. We do not. In intensive care, however, there are no diversified treatments.
The fact is that even in resuscitations (which cost € 1,000 a day) there are no shortage of statistical differences. In Campania, for example, there are only 137 occupied “intensive” beds, which means 1 for every 42,000 inhabitants compared to 330 in Veneto, which is equivalent to 1 for every 15,000 inhabitants.
Why? It is known that in Piedmont the Region uses a quota of intensive therapies to accelerate recovery. But an important factor that is helping the health system in the South is the average age, which is lower in the South. Campania sails at an altitude of 42.5 years against 45.4 for the Venetians. This figure also has a great impact on mortality, which is also very favorable for the South: 40 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in Sicily against 235 in Lombardy or 160 in Piedmont. “There is a lot of study – says Lopalco – but we can say that the virus will change the Italian health history also in terms of easy trials”.
Last update: 23:17
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