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The current situation of Valle d’Aosta is a little less worrisome compared to what I reported in my previous note of November 3, due to the presence of some timid signs of optimism.
I’ll explain how I built my charts, which anyone can refer to. First of all the fountain: the daily Civil Protection bulletin, with its scarce data, and the report Weekly report from the Istituto Superiore della Sanità (ISS), with its more in-depth analyzes but with a long delay in the face of a pandemic that is evolving day by day (to be clear: report available (published on November 10 refers to the week of October 26 to November 1 with data updated to November 7). Then how I built them: being small numbers, with large daily variations that make them difficult to understand, I decided to evaluate weekly trends instead of newspapers. With all these limitations, here are my analyzes.
As you see, the new cases (Green Line) have more than tripled compared to the peak of the first phase. In the week of March 28 to April 3 there were an average of 38 cases per day, in the week of November 7 to 13 there were 128. As I said last time, this is not as significant as it might seem, because it is strongly influenced by the greater possibility of performing diagnostic swabs that allowed testing not only sick subjects, as was the case at the beginning, but also suspects, subjects intercepted by contact tracking and those subjected to put on screen for several reasons.
The graph of hospitalized patients (blue line, which includes ordinary hospitalizations and ICU hospitalizations), again weekly, that is, how many are the average daily hospitalizations week by week, shows two main characteristics: the first is that the peak the first phase has already been exceeded both in absolute value and in slope of the curve, which represents the speed of the increase; the second is that there has been a marked slowdown in the last two weeks. The red line, on the other hand, represents the average daily ICU admissions, always weekly: fortunately, the peak of 26 admissions in the first phase has not been reached (this week we have reached 15) and the slope of the current curve, although still in growth is less pronounced.
In more understandable terms: the increase in hospital admissions represents a strong stress for the entire health system with congested emergency room, traditional rooms converted to Covid rooms, reduction, if not total interruption, of normal hospital activity for all other diseases, increased risk of contagion for all; and just to name a few, as everyone knows.
Third graph, deaths (red line): regrettably increasing, with a peak of 39 deaths overall in the last week, compared to a weekly peak of 37 in the first phase. The only consolation is that deaths follow the other curves in 1-2 weeks and that they have decreased in recent weeks: +14 from October 24 to 30 compared to the previous week in which the first 3 cases had occurred, + 12 from October 31 to November 5 and +10 from November 7 to 13.
You’re still wondering Why did I mention shy signs of optimism? The only parameter that justifies it, in addition to the slowdown in the hospitalization curve, is the Rt: As is well known, above the value of one means that the pandemic is increasing, while below one it decreases. And in the last two weeks examined by the ISS, which sadly stop on November 1, it is clearly declining. We hope this trend will be confirmed.
A little methodological note: Why does RT decrease when in fact cases increase? I report exactly the official explanation from the ISS. “The two indicators are calculated with slightly different data: in fact, the case count refers to the total number of people with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection [che è la denominazione esatta del virus responsabile della pandemia] diagnosed every day in the Italian territory (by date of diagnosis), while the RT is calculated on the subgroup of cases with non-imported symptoms and refers to the moments in which these symptoms developed (by date of onset of symptoms ). Therefore, the RT calculation refers to a part of the curve and to a “staggered” time period of approximately 1 week “.
Thanks for your attention and goodbye, I hope with better results.
