UK vs Italy - Coronavirus figures

[utterlybutterly8]

Chris Whitty said today that he believes we are three weeks behind Italy in this coronavirus crisis. These are the comparable fatality figures I’ve found for both countries by looking through old news reports. Unfortunately I’m not able to compare numbers of cases because we’re not testing in the UK.

Italy

Feb 25th: 11
March 4th: 107
March 7th: 197
March 9th: 463
March 13th: 1266
March 15th: 1809

UK

March 5th: 1
March 8th: 3
March 12th: 10
March 16th: 55

So, if we reach 107 deaths in the UK by March 18th, we’ll be two weeks behind Italy.
If we reach 107 by March 25th we’ll be three weeks behind and if we reach 107 by April 2nd we’ll be four weeks behind.

I’m just praying that the number of fatalities will start to level off soon, but that was a big leap in the UK between the 12th and the 16th

Meanwhile more people have died from seasonal flu in the UK than previous years - or is it actually corona virus? We don't know as we are not testing

Yes, how do we know who has definitely died from CV and who has died from something similar, like flu?

If 80% catch it and 1% of those die, that’s half a million deaths. At the peak we could be looking at 5-10k deaths per day. I hope it stays far below that figure!

The people who have died so far have been really sick. I think I read somewhere that for most it wasn’t even clear if Covid killed them or if it was pneumonia or sepsis related to the flu. If we can flatten the peak so covid hits as the flu season ends we may get a better idea.

"how do we know who has definitely died from CV and who has died from something similar, like flu?*

They are testing all hospital and admissions for respiratory illness so the death count will be correct. We just don't know the death rate because the ' no of infections' will be way off

Currently all a postmortem can identify is that someone had pneumonia, flu, sepsis, and covid, not necessarily which one of the conditions killed them

They are testing all hospital and admissions for respiratory illness so the death count will be correct.

What about those who pass away at home?

I’m praying that now Boris has introduced these more stringent measures the number of deaths slows right down. I guess we might not see the effect for several weeks.

71 UK deaths now. If this figure jumps to 107 by tomorrow then we’ll be exactly two weeks behind Italy - god forbid. Chris Whitty said the other day we thought we were about three weeks behind them.

Rishi Sunak or Boris (can’t remember which) has just said we’ve now entered the steep rise part of the curve. Let’s hope the peak comes sooner and is lower than expected.

Chris Whitty had previously predicted the UK was three weeks behind Italy, but with UK fatalities now confirmed as 104, we're officially just two weeks behind them. We can expect cases to jump by another 90 by Saturday if the virus is spreading to the same extent as it has done in Italy.

Shit

Why is everyone obsessed with how many weeks they are behind Italy? It’s an almost pointless comparison.

Why is everyone obsessed with how many weeks they are behind Italy? It’s an almost pointless comparison.

Because it's helpful to know broadly what to expect - how much worse this is going to get and when we can expect it to level out and taper off.

it's not pointless to at least mentally prepare for the awfulness that is to come and know where we are headed

And because we have been slow to implement measures and have a healthcare system only slightly better than theirs.

Every country is different because social patterns and lifestyle factors play a part.

Believe you me, Italy is looking at the UK and asking why?
Italy was late enough to take it seriously.
But God help the UK.
Italy's peak isn't expected for another 15-20 days and the hospitals in the north have tents in their grounds to treat people and are airlifting out to the regions.

We were always 2 weeks behind Italy, according to the figures. Just like the worst case was NEVER 100,000 deaths (the report from Imperial College shows that under the first plan, the BEST case was 250,000 deaths).

We have been lied to continuously. The question is, why?

I keep hearing on here that we have better healthcare than Italy but loads of my European friends genuinely think we have one of the "worst" healthcare systems in Europe.

Is there any evidence Lombardy has worse healthcare?

Look at this graph.... it doesn't make any sense.

Italy's peak isn't expected for another 15-20 days

@TheCanterburyWhales So they're expecting it to peak in Italy that soon? Do you have a source for this?

I thought it wasn't expected to peak for many months yet, but am really hoping that you're right.

@inasense, the data for Italy and the UK is from 2012. I would imagine that a lot has changed since then.

No it doesn't.
Lombardia was hit because it was a perfect storm

Highly populated and industrialised (eg imports and exports)
Lots of tourism in proximity
Looked at China and went "so?"
Patient 0 took a while to locate (he is German)
Patient 1 unfortunately was a super spreader.

Yes I have many sources. Primarily the one I'm watching on TV at the moment which is the daily update of figures from the Italian health minister and the Protezione Civile.

Any country's peak should come approx 14-20 days after lockdown is activated.
Deaths will of course continue after that but peak contagion should be about that. Italy locked down totally 9 days ago. Peak expected first week of April.

@utterlybutterly8 they are talking about 25 March onwards depending on the region.

@InASense Italy's healthcare is consistently ranked highly, sometimes as number one or two in the world depending on the rankings. Lombardy is one of the richest regions with the best healthcare in the country, I think if the hotspot had been in one of the poorer southern Italian regions the figures would be much much worse. Italy has much higher ratio of doctors for the population and hospital (including ICU) beds than the UK. Anecdotally care is far better than in the UK, and it's much, much easier to see a specialist.

We are at 104 deaths.
So I suspect we will surpass 107 tomorrow.....

The WHO situation reports have good epidemic curve charts. However it’s by world region. So you can see China (green) vs Europe (Orange) and other regions.
Read more at www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200317-sitrep-57-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=a26922f2_4