This would assume they have tested upwards of 200,000+ patients in order to get a 25% infection rate.
I'm using 25% as a conservative figure. If you liberally drop this down to 10% infected tested, we'd have to be at 500,000+ successfully administered, processed and reported RT-PCR tests.
Side note: Roche's best machines, for example, can process 4,100 RT-PCR tests in a fully automated fashion and this not just a machine on a desktop, but a full-blown assembly line operation.
Intriguing.
As an orientation, Germany doesn't publish aggregated numbers but federal organizations said in an interview that at the moment, ~100-150k tests per week are performed, so the positive rate there should be <5%. But I'm not sure how reliable that number is. Local test centers don't have to report all tests (just positive ones) so I'm not even sure if the government has that info.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_I...
[1] https://github.com/pcm-dpc/COVID-19/blob/master/dati-andamen...
It's not really acceptable in a country than loses between 8-24k people a year to influenza strains anyway.
Are you sure this is true? Another post claims all dead are tested.
I think using these kind of terms is unwise in these troubled days, unless you are a professional in the relavant field, and if you are, Hackernews isn't the platform for the discussion.
An epidemiologist friend explained various things to me the other day: 1. hardly anyone dies OF covid-19 (cause of death on death certificate), people die WITH covid-19 (in which case it would still be mentioned somewhere on the death certificate). 2. A great many different statistics are generally gathered, but these are complex and need a lot of knowledge to interpret. These would include cases where Covid-19 was suspected to be involved, confirmed to be involved, prime cause of death (which is very rare, according to my friend). In the end, the general public is presented with a single number which indeed doesn't tell the whole story, but at least gives some indication of the situation.
What's this number? Tests conducted per day? The number of DNA patterns known to the analyzer?
Many other RT-PCR capable machines exist out there (800 is the total number in Europe cumulative) but this assumes an efficient point-of test > courier > lab > results process which many countries simply lack.
One or two tests can confirm cases for a whole town. They simply (and safely) assume that all flu-like illnesses coming from a certain area are covid.
Because if true, combine that with the facts that
- 87% of deaths occur at home and not in ICU [1]
- median age of deaths is 80 years old [2]
Are all deaths just being counted as Covid-19 (without test then)? I think it would be really interesting to compare baseline deaths in February/March from previous years to this one.
[1] https://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/cronaca/coronavirus-in-lomba...
[2] https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronavirus/bollettino/Report-C...
It is already compared. On
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_I...
you can easily see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Is_COVID-19_like_a_flu%3F...
and it's not flu and the number of people who can't breathe, have fever and die is orders of magnitude higher.
Italians are most likely counting most if not all deaths as SARS-Cov2 deaths.
1) A large amount of the elderly are going to hospitals because of pre-existing conditions that might be flaring up or presenting as they normally do. They enter the clinic > get complications > get marked down as dying from SARS-Cov2. And/or they acquire hospital acquired pneumonia (HAP).
2) I’ve read the ISS report cover to cover and yes, nearly ALL deaths are due to 1) age greater than 70, 2) 75% showing 2 (two) or more per-existing conditions with a staggering 99% showing 1 (one) or more pre-existing conditions. Let’s not forget the above comment (HAP or other hospital acquired infections from SARS-Cov2, Influenza, whatever).
3) Seeing a death count YOY would be beneficial here indeed.
I don’t think ANYBODY will be able to answer my initial question here.
There is NO WAY in hell the Italians have tested over 200,000 patients for SARS-Cov2 in a matter of 2-3 weeks due to:
1) such capacity simply does not exist
2) Italians have been under quarantine and when they weren’t they were drinking coffee and not lining up for tests.
3) the time of test > result trajectory > reported data is impossible
4) such high throughout testing capacity simply does not exist
Where are these magic numbers coming from? :)
What?
>They simply (and safely) assume that all flu-like illnesses coming from a certain area are covid.
So Influenza A, B are safely assumed to be SARS-Cov2.
Yeah... no.
Otherwise, it would have to be some OTHER virus not known to humanity appearing at the same time, behaving unlike the viruses we know and watch every year, magically appearing exactly in the community where you verified the existence of the one for which you test.
This is a post (sorry, in Italian) that describes the "strategy" adopted to test people, that of course varies by region. tl;dr: in regions like Lombardia (the most affected) they can almost only test people who really show severe signs, therefore the rate is around 38%.
https://www.ilpost.it/2020/03/20/tampone-test-coronavirus/
Official data is here: https://github.com/pcm-dpc/COVID-19, I just put it in a spreadsheet for easier consumption.
Edit: forgot a link
But, one isn't permitted to voice it.
Covid is a convenient cover for the scandal. If you die in Lombardy -- for any reason -- you are listed as a covid patient. It's fraud.
Plain and simple.
(Incidentally, its not all of Italy... just the northern region.)
The number of tests is equally bullshit. As another poster in this thread alluded to -- and I think there is a link up there -- the number is an 'estimate'.
