Coronavirus

Characteristics of COVID-19 patients dying in Italy

In line with the directions issued by the Ministry of Health in its circular published on February 2020 (protocol 0005889-25/02/2020), all certification recording COVID-19 as the cause of death shall be accompanied by an opinion of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS). A working group has therefore been created to study the cause of death of patients who had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.

The analysis is based on data from medical records and the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) death files recording the patients’ cause of death. Data are collected on the web platform http://covid-19.iss.it, which is also used for the national epidemiological and virological surveillance of COVID-19 cases in Italy (coordinated by the ISS and established by ministerial circular n. 1997 of 22 January 2020).

For more information, simply send an email to decessicovid-19@iss.it, or call Prof. Graziano Onder (Director of the Department of Cardiovascular, Endocrine-Metabolic Diseases and Ageing, ISS) on: 06/49904231.

Reports on the characteristics of COVID-19 patients dying in Italy are published on this page on Fridays.