Forecasting Covid-19 Outbreak Progression in Italian Regions: A model based on neural network training from Chinese data

Cosimo Distante; Igor Gadelha Pereira; Luiz Marcos Garcia Goncalves; Prisco Piscitelli; Alessandro Miani

According to the Italian National Institute of Health (ISS), at the date of April 8 th in Italy there were about 140,000 people positive to the 2019-nCoV (including deceased patients) since the beginning of epidemic (95,262 currently positive and 26,491 healed). [7] About 53% of cases are males (median age: 62 years old). Detailed epidemiological figures are provided by the Italian National Institute of Health (ISS) and tell us that men represent the majority of cases in people aged 0-9 and 50-79 (range 52-63%), while in the younger age groups 0-19, as well as between 80 and 89 years old, males and females are equally represented among people who tested positive for Covid-19. Women accounted for 70% of cases >90 years old and about 55% between 20 and 39 years of age, but men represented also the vast majority of deceased people in all the age groups up to 89 years old (range 57-79%). [7] Regional figures are available up to April 8 th and show that about 30% (n=28,545) of currently positive people still live in Lombardy (56% if considering the overall cases confirmed from the beginning of the epidemic), followed by Emilia Romagna (13.7% of currently positive people), Piedmont (11.5%), Veneto (n=10.7%), Tuscany (5.8%), Marche (3.7%), Lazio (n=3.6%), Liguria and Trentino Alto Adige (3.4%), Campania and Apulia (3%), Sicily (2%), Friuli Venezia Giulia and Abruzzo (1.5%), and less than 1% in Umbria, Sardinia, Calabria, Val d'Aosta, Basilicata, and Molise. [7] A total of 28,485 symptomatic people were hospitalized at the same date of April 8 th With the exception of Lazio (n=196), Campania (n=97) and Apulia (n=90), all the other regions of Central and Southern Italy, at the moment have less than 65 patients admitted to the ICUs of their regional healthcare systems. [7] On April 8 th , total deaths were 17,669 at national level (+65% from March 30 th to April 8 th ), with in Val d'Aosta and less than 50 in the other four regions (Figure 1 ). [7] Lethality rates seems to increase with age and it is higher in males: 0% from 0 to 29 and <1% between 30 and 49 years of age; 2.3% in the age group 50-59 (1% in women and 3.5% in men); 8.4% from 60 to 69 years old (