Socio-Economic Patterns of COVID-19 During the Pandemic in Italy (original) (raw)

Socioeconomic patterns and COVID-19 outcomes before, during and after the lockdown in Italy (2020)

Health & Place, 2021

The objective was to investigate the association between deprivation and COVID-19 outcomes in Italy during prelockdown, lockdown and post-lockdown periods using a retrospective cohort study with 38,534,169 citizens and 222,875 COVID-19 cases. Multilevel negative binomial regression models, adjusting for age, sex, populationdensity and region of residence were conducted to evaluate the association between area-level deprivation and COVID-19 incidence, case-hospitalisation rate and case-fatality. During lockdown and post-lockdown, but not during pre-lockdown, higher incidence of cases was observed in the most deprived municipalities compared with the least deprived ones. No differences in case-hospitalisation and case-fatality according to deprivation were observed in any period under study.

Indirect impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and its containment measures on social inequalities in hospital utilisation in Italy

Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health

BackgroundThe pandemic may undermine the equity of access to and utilisation of health services for conditions other than COVID-19. The objective of the study is to evaluate the indirect impact of COVID-19 and lockdown measures on sociodemographic inequalities in healthcare utilisation in seven Italian areas.MethodsIn this multicentre retrospective study, we evaluated whether COVID-19 modified the association between educational level or deprivation and indicators of hospital utilisation and quality of care. We also assessed variations in gradients by sex and age class. We estimated age-standardised rates and prevalence and their relative per cent changes comparing pandemic (2020) and pre-pandemic (2018–2019) periods, and the Relative Index of Inequalities (RIIs) fitting multivariable Poisson models with an interaction between socioeconomic position and period.ResultsCompared with 2018–2019, hospital utilisation and, to a lesser extent, timeliness of procedures indicators fell durin...

Assessing the Impact of Individual Characteristics and Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Provinces of Milan and Lodi

International Journal of Health Services, 2021

Social inequalities in health are known to be influenced by the socioeconomic status of the territory in which people live. In the context of the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, this study is aimed at assessing the role of 5 area-level indicators in shaping the risk of contagion in the provinces of Milan and Lodi (Lombardy, Italy), namely: educational disadvantage , unemployment, housing crowding, mobility, and population density. The study area includes the municipalities at the origin of the first Italian epidemic outbreak. Data on COVID-19 patients from the Integrated Datawarehouse for COVID Analysis in Milan were used and matched with aggregate-level data from the National Institute of Statistics Italy (Istat). Multilevel logistic regression models were used to estimate the association between the census block-level predictors and COVID-19 infection, independently of age, sex, country of birth, and preexisting health conditions. All the variables were significantly associated with the outcome, with different effects before and after the lockdown and according to the province of residence. This suggests a pattern of socioeconomic inequalities in the outbreak, which should be taken into account in the eventuality of future epidemics to contain their spread and its related disparities.

The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic and Lockdown Measures on Quality of Life among Italian General Population

Journal of Clinical Medicine

The COVID-19 pandemic that has hit the world in the year 2020 has put a strain on our ability to cope with events and revolutionized our daily habits. On 9 March, Italy was forced to lockdown to prevent the spread of the infection, with measures including the mandatory closure of schools and nonessential activities, travel restrictions, and the obligation to spend entire weeks in the same physical space. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown measures on quality of life (QoL) in a large Italian sample, in order to investigate possible differences in QoL levels related to both demographic and pandemic-specific variables. A total of 2251 Italian adults (1665 women, mainly young and middle adults) were recruited via a snowball sampling strategy. Participants were requested to answer to an online survey, which included demographic and COVID-related information items, and the World Health Organization Quality of Life BREF questionnaire (WHOQO...

Health and Healthcare Variables Associated with Italy’s Excess Mortality during the First Wave of the COVID-19 pandemic: An Ecological Study

2021

BackgroundHealthcare factors have strongly influenced the propagation of COVID-19. The present study aims to examine whether excess mortality during the first phase of the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy was associated with health, healthcare, demographic, and socioeconomic indicators measured at a provincial level.MethodsThe present ecological study concerns the raw number of deaths from Jan. 1 to Apr. 30, 2020 and the mean number of deaths in the same months of 2015 to 2019, per province. Information on socioeconomic factors and healthcare settings were extracted from the most recently updated databases on the ISTAT website. Two multilevel, multivariate models were constructed to test whether excess mortality was associated with the indicators across 107 provinces in Italy.ResultsOn linear multilevel, multivariate analysis, AIDS mortality rate (p-value <0.05) correlates positively with excess mortality, while a higher density of General Practitioners (number of GPs per 1,000 populat...

COVID-19 and Social and Health Inequalities in Italy: A Syndemic Approach

e-cadernos CES

The article begins by introducing three questions that make the Italian case of health inequalities during the COVID-19 pandemic particularly interesting and goes on to discuss the problem of an appropriate and valid model to analyse the outbreak, defining it as a "syndemic" and not simply a pandemic. Given the unsatisfactory heuristic value of the current, most common models of social determinants of health inequalities in terms of the syndemic approach, a new non-linear circular causal model is proposed. Its application to the case of Italy to analyse the COVID-19 syndemic outcomes in terms of exposure, susceptibility, access to healthcare, and quality of life is then presented and discussed in detail. The conclusions reached highlight how the responses to the three initial questions confirm the validity of the application of the model proposed and the possible utilization of the results obtained for policy action.

Covid-19 in Italy : Impact of Lockdown in Italy on Socio-Economic Situation

Journal of Social Science

The COVID-19 outbreak in Italy ranks third most in the world with very continued growth over time. The purpose of this article is to discuss the case of COVID-19 in Italy and its impact on socioeconomic life as well as international relations between Italy and other countries. This article uses library reviews to perform analysis related to the topic of this article using sources such as academic journals, research reports, news articles and so on.

Patterns of COVID-19 related excess mortality in the municipalities of Northern Italy

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) spatial distribution in Italy is inhomogeneous, because of its ways of spreading from the initial hotspots. The impact of COVID-19 on mortality has been described at the regional level, while less is known about mortality in demographic subgroups within municipalities. We aimed to describe the excess mortality (EM) due to COVID-19 in the three most affected Italian regions, by estimating EM in subgroups defined by gender and age classes within each municipality from February 23 to March 31, 2020. EM varied widely among municipalities even within the same region; it was similar between genders for the ≥75 age group, while in the other age groups it was higher in males. Thus, nearby municipalities may show a different mortality burden despite being under common regional health policies, possibly as a result of policies adopted both at the regional and at the municipality level.

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic crisis in Italy: comparison of 2020 with non-pharmaceutical measures and 2021 with pervasive vaccination programs

2021

How is the impact of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Italy in the 2020 (without vaccinations and with non-pharmaceutical interventions) versus 2021 (with a vast roll out of COVID-19 vaccination programs) ? Italy is an interesting case study because was one of first European countries to experience in 2020 higher numbers of COVID-19 related infected individuals and deaths and in 2021 has a high share of people vaccinated against COVID-19.This study answers the question with a comparative analysis of the effects of COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021. Data of confirmed cases, hospitalizations, admissions to ICUs and fatality rate for 176 days are analyzed with the Independent Samples t-Test that compares the means of two groups concerning values from April to September 2020 (without vaccinations and with non-pharmaceutical measures) and 2021 (with pharmaceutical interventions based on a vast vaccination program). Results suggest that in 2020 and in 2021 the impact of COVID-19 in society ...

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Total and Cause-Specific Mortality in Pavia, Northern Italy

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

The COVID-19 pandemic had an unfavorable impact on overall mortality in Italy, with the strongest consequences in northern Italy. Scant data are available on cause-specific mortality. This study aims at investigating the impact of the pandemic on the overall and cause-specific mortality in one province in northern Italy, Pavia. We linked individual-level administrative data (i.e., death certification and population data) from the Health Protection Agency (HPA) in Pavia province between 2015 and 2020. We computed age-standardized mortality rates (Italian population 2011) by cause, sex, and calendar year, and computed the rate ratio and the corresponding 95% confidence intervals to compare rates in 2020 versus 2015–2019. The 2020 excess total mortality in Pavia was 24% in men and 25% in women, reaching rates of 1272.6/100,000 and 1304.4/100,000, respectively. Significant excesses were found for infectious and parasitic diseases, excluding COVID-19 (about +30% in both sexes); respirato...