News from the front: Excess mortality and life expectancy in two major epicentres of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy

Ghislandi, S.; Muttarak, R.; Sauerberg, M.; Scotti, B.

Existing studies commonly rely on national official reports to estimate the impact of COVID-19 on population health and human life. However, relying on national reports is problematic because classification and estimation of COVID-19 mortality are not consistent across countries. Likewise, delay coronavirus test results and shortage of testing kits can result in undercounting of coronavirus deaths. To overcome these problems, this study exploits all cause daily death registrations data provide by the Italian Statistical Office (ISTAT) from 1st January to 4th April 2020. This allows us to: 1) calculate excess mortality in 2020 compared to the years 2015 to 2019; and 2) estimate life expectancy on a seasonal and annual basis. We focus our analysis on Bergamo and Brescia, the two hardest hit provinces in Lombardy, northern Italy. Given the clustering nature of the epidemic, focusing on the areas with high concentration of severe illness and deaths allows us to capture the true impact of COVID-19 on mortality and life expectancy, which are likely to be underestimated in the national level data. We find that on the period 1 Jan to 4 April 2020, seasonal life expectancy in Bergamo reduced by around 8.1 and 6.5 years compared to 2019 for men and women respectively (4.5 and 3.4 years in Brescia). The drop in period life expectancy for 2020 may total up to 3 years in the case of men and 2 years in the case of women. Such a sharp decrease in life expectancy has not been experienced in modern history since the Second World War. This study shows that, in the absence of public health interventions to reduce the spread of the virus, COVID-19 has set life expectancy in Bergamo and Brescia back to the Italian life expectancy of 15 years ago.