This post was originally published on this site
MILAN — In the town of Coccaglio, an hour’s drive east of here, the local nursing home lost over a third of its residents in March. None of the 24 people who died there was tested for the new coronavirus. Nor were the 38 people who died in another nursing home in the nearby town of Lodi.
These aren’t isolated incidents. Italy’s official death toll from the virus stands at 13,155, the most of any country in the world. But that number tells only part of the story because many people who die from the virus don’t make it to the hospital and are never tested.
Coronavirus update: There are now over 1 million global coronavirus cases and 51,485 deaths
‘There are many more dead than are officially declared. But this is not a j’accuse. People died and they were never tested because time and resources are limited.’
In the areas worst hit by the pandemic, Italy is undercounting thousands of deaths caused by the virus, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows, indicating that the pandemic’s human toll may end up being much greater, and infections far more widespread, than official data indicate.
Italy’s hidden death toll shows what could lie in store for the worst-hit areas of the U.S., Europe and many other countries in the weeks ahead if the coronavirus is not tamed fast. The burden that the pandemic puts on health-care systems can cause so many deaths that it is hard to gauge the full human cost.
As stretched and sometimes overwhelmed hospitals fight to save their patients, many other people die unseen and uncounted, including elderly people in out-of-the-way locations. In addition, the health-care crisis can lead to a surge of deaths from other causes that would normally be treatable.
An expanded version of this report appears at WSJ.com.
Trending at WSJ.com:
