What happens to Italy?

Why are there so many infections and deaths in the coronavirus pandemic?

Geographical and demographic analysis

Italy is a medium-sized European country. With 301,000 km2 there are 9 other countries in Europe that have a larger area but only 3 have a larger population (60.5 million).

By belonging to the European Union, EU citizens (about 510 million) have free access to the country.

In addition there is a large immigrant population, approximately 10% (about 6 million).

At the same time it is one of the countries with the most tourist visits in the world. With 63 million per year, it is the fifth worldwide (after France, Spain, the US and China).

Only through Fiumicino (the airport in Rome) between 4 and 5 million people pass every year. All these data show that Italians are normally highly exposed to contacts with people traveling from other countries (including those from Italian communities abroad that number about 4 to 5 million).

Added to all of the above is the fact that the country is highly urbanized with several cities with more than 1 million inhabitants (Rome 4.5 million, Milan 3.2 million, Naples 3.1 million, Turin 2.2 million, etc.). This concentration in cities leads to frequent trips by urban residents to areas of origin in smaller towns or rural areas.

For all these reasons (and others that will be developed later) in the event of epidemics or pandemics, Italians are highly exposed to infections.

It is also clear that in a country with the demographic complexities that we were expressing it can be very difficult to install a strict quarantine.

But if this were not enough, other elements of a social nature are added that will be included in the following text in which this topic is analyzed, explaining in more detail the reason for the contagiousness of the coronavirus (more than 60,000 so far) and mortality (more than 6,000 so far). considerably higher than in other countries of the world. .

Italy has been hit particularly hard, with some 4,000 deaths thus far. Overwhelmed hospital staffers have had to make devastating decisions about who to treat and who they must let perish. The reason why Italy is suffering so badly, write University of Oxford researchers in a new paper in the journal Demographic Science, may be twofold: The country has the second-oldest population on earth, and its young tend to mingle more often with the elderly, like their grandparents. Such demographic research will be critical in facing down the threat elsewhere, as more countries grapple with a deadly pandemic that’s just getting started and we learn more about how the virus is transmitted within families and communities

In Italy, 23 percent of the population is over age 65, compared to the US, where that population is 16 % “Extended longevity has played some role in changing the population structure,” says University of Oxford demographer and epidemiologist Jennifer Beam Dowd, lead author of the new paper. “But it actually has most to do with how rapid the decline in fertility has been in a population.” That is, it’s affected more by Italians having having fewer children than it is by them living longer.

At the same time, young Italians tend to interact a lot with their elders. Dowd’s Italian coauthors note that young folks might live with their parents and grandparents in rural areas but commute to work in cities like Milan. Data on the composition of Italian 

. households bears out this familial arrangement too.

The study’s authors argue that this frequent travel between cities and family homes may have exacerbated the “silent” spread of the novel coronavirus. Young people working and socializing in urban areas interact with large crowds, where they may pick up the disease and take it home. If they have no symptoms, they’ll have no clue that they’re infecting their elders, the most vulnerable population.

“We know now that the mortality is higher in older individuals, but what's not clear yet is why,” says Carlos Del Rio, executive associate dean of the Emory School of Medicine at Grady Health System, who wasn't involved in this research. For example, it could be a matter of older people having weaker respiratory systems, which could also lead to a higher mortality rate among seniors for diseases like pneumonia.

Other researchers studying why children don’t seem to get that sick from Covid-19 have pointed out the corollary: Kids tend to have “pristine” lungs that have not already been damaged by a lifetime of inflammation caused by allergies, pollutants, and diseases. This might make them more resistant to attack by the new virus.

Despite a full lockdown in place in Italy since the weekend, the virus has already spread far and wide. But with this kind of demographic knowledge, public health officials can better confront the threat elsewhere, Dowd says. “One of the points that we were trying to make is that it's not necessarily just about isolating the older population—we are identifying that they're the most vulnerable—but the general social distancing that's being encouraged to flatten the curve,” says Dowd. Flattening the curve means slowing the rate of new infections, buying researchers time to develop treatments and vaccines, and giving hospitals some respite. “I think our point was that's actually more important when you have a higher fraction of your population that is vulnerable,” she says.

Reference:

https://www.wired.com/story/why-the-coronavirus-hit-italy-so-hard/