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There are three emails that trace the history of the decision, taken retrospectively on January 22, when Lombardy was in the red zone for a week, to return it to orange. These documents speak of the alarm that was triggered in Rome over the data of the Region and the decision of the latter to request, last Friday, the change of classification.
The symptomatic
The central issue is the system by which positive symptoms are counted. Only those, which the technicians of the control room and the Higher Institute of Health have been repeating for 36 weeks, are used to calculate the rate of contagion of the disease, that is, at what speed it passes from one person to another. It is logical: it is not possible to take into account even those who have none. On Saturday, the Institute explained that “each time a clinical case is detected, the corresponding field of” clinical status “is filled in, indicating the degree of severity of the symptoms, from paucisymptomatic to severe and, when possible, also the date of its appearance. beginning “. As for Lombardy, they assure from the Institute, “since the beginning of the epidemic in the last period, a large number of cases has been reported, significantly higher than that observed in other regions, with a date of onset of symptoms in which not associated with a clinical condition and, therefore, it continued to be considered initially symptomatic. This anomaly has been reported several times by the ISS to the Region “.
The January 7 alarm
This last sentence of the ISS press release refers to the first exchanges between Rome and Milan that took place at the beginning of the year. On January 7, the Institute’s technicians send an email to the Lombardy welfare department that someone defines as “sincere.” The text indicated that something was wrong with the data, and technicians were invited to carefully verify what was happening. The letter did not take effect, so much so that on Friday, January 15, the Rt of Lombardy jumped to 1.4. As Silvio Brusaferro, president of the Institute, explained to Repubblica, since the monitoring began, on Wednesday the advance of the RT is sent to the Regions precisely so that they can verify it. Lombardy, however, had nothing to complain about: “There was no dispute in those days,” Brusaferro explained. “In the follow-up on Friday the 15th everything went smoothly.” Lombardy began to protest after the signing of the order of the Minister of Health that put her in the red zone, not before, and above all made it a political issue. Meanwhile, the technicians studied the data and last Monday contacts with the Institute were resumed.
The email of the 19: everything to redo
On Tuesday, December 19, the council sent the Institute the second essential email in this story. With the present, after today’s discussions, it is requested that a calculation be made of the RTS symptom index, incorporating the changes defined at a technical level related to the count of recovered and deceased patients ”. It is the first request from Lombardy, which recognizes how something has changed in the data entered in the database. For the period between December 15 and 30 (in which the RT of January 15 was calculated), the number of symptomatic and asymptomatic cases was adjusted. So, the people who had the first symptoms in those 15 days went from 14,180 to 4,918. A big jump, which brings the average Rt down from 1.4 to 0.88.
“Revaluation is requested”
And on the day of the follow-up, that is to say 22 o’clock, the head of the Social Welfare department Marco Trivelli sends an email to the Institute and the ministry at 12.25, that is, 5 minutes before the meeting in the control room. Estimated, taking into account the integration of the data flow transmitted on Wednesday 20 with respect to Wednesday 13, carried out after the technical comparison between Iss and the Department of Well-being regarding the requalification of the clinical state field (…) evaluation of the index Rt in week thirty-five. Now for then. The emails say that the Region is requesting the modification of the RT and also that the data on the 22nd are different from those communicated on the 15th, contrary to what Governor Attilio Fontana stated.
Throwing the Lombard RT issue into a fight certainly helps to avoid the truth. And the Lombard citizens, this time more than ever have the right to know how things are, “said Milan Mayor Beppe Sala yesterday:” The easiest way to close the matter is for the Lombardy Region to show the data. The calculation of RT is an eminently technical fact, not a political one.
