All the reasons on the papocchio of data and Rt between Iss and the Lombardy Region
What happened between the Higher Institute of Health and the Lombardy Region with the Rt index? Facts, numbers, controversies and insights
From red zone to orange zone. Since Sunday 24 January, there are less restrictive measures in Lombardy, a region that had been placed in the red zone for a wrong Rt index. Now it is the hunt for the culprit, with the Region and the Government rebounding the accusations. What happened?
INDEX RT
Let's start from the beginning (or almost). The figure that brought Lombardy back into the red zone is the Rt index for the week from 4 to 10 January, updated to 13 January, at 1.4 (lower value of 1.38 and a maximum value of 1.43).
Based on this number, the control room decides that "two Regions and autonomous provinces (Bolzano and Lombardy) have a punctual Rt greater than 1.25 even in the lower limit, therefore compatible with a type 3 scenario".
OVERESTIMATED NUMBERS
But, according to the Lombardy Region, these are numbers overestimated by the Higher Institute of Health . In practice, more infected are counted than there really are.
DATA VALIDATED BY THE REGION
But it is, the Ministry of Health and Higher Institute of Health argue, of data that have been "repeatedly validated by the Region itself".
Region, explain from the ISS, which would have rectified, on January 20, the number of symptomatic cases, which are the only ones that fall within the calculation of the Rt. On that occasion, from 14,180 cases with a symptom onset date in the period 15-30 December, January 20, it went to 4,918.
THE COUNT
But guilt and responsibility aside, what is the wrong calculation due to? In that Rt index, hundreds of healed are also counted , but they have not been declared healed.
WHAT THE CORRIERE DELLA SERA HAS WRITTEN
The problem is that the number of cases indicated by the Region on which the Rt is calculated by the Higher Institute of Health is overestimated, stressed the Corriere della Sera last Saturday: “They are counted more infected than there really are. It seems paradoxical, but it is the truth: among the cases there are also hundreds of healed. They are above all those who from 12 October, according to the new rules of the ministry, can interrupt the isolation between 10 and 21 days from the onset of symptoms without the double negative buffer. All of them in the reports compiled by Cereda appear as people with "onset of symptoms", but without the description of the clinical status (asymptomatic, paucisymptomatic, symptoms). If the field is not filled in, in the absence of information, when they recover, they are not deleted ".
ASYMPTOMATICS DO NOT ESCAPE FROM THE COUNT
“On 12 October a circular from the Ministry of Health says that an asymptomatic person with a positive swab after 21 days is considered cured. But without a negative swab, the person is still infected on the regional database. Not only Lombardy… ”, underlined on Twitter the jurist Vitalba Azzollini who is also following these aspects in the newspaper Domani directed by Stefano Feltri.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/tutti-i-perche-sul-papocchio-di-dati-e-rt-fra-iss-e-regione-lombardia/ on Mon, 25 Jan 2021 15:33:24 +0000.