Real-time tracking of epidemic helps governments and health authorities make timely data-driven decisions. Official mortality data, whenever reliable and available, is usually published with a substantial delay. We report results of using newspapers obituaries to “nowcast” the mortality levels observed in Italy during the COVID-19 outbreak between February 24, 2020 and April 15, 2020. Mortality levels predicted using obituaries outperform forecasts based on past mortality according to several performance metrics, making obituaries a potentially valid alternative source of information to deal with epidemic surveillance.

(2021). Using newspaper obituaries to “nowcast” daily mortality: evidence from the Italian COVID-19 hot-spots [journal article - articolo]. In HEALTH POLICY. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10446/173159

Using newspaper obituaries to “nowcast” daily mortality: evidence from the Italian COVID-19 hot-spots

Buonanno, Paolo;Puca, Marcello
2021-01-01

Abstract

Real-time tracking of epidemic helps governments and health authorities make timely data-driven decisions. Official mortality data, whenever reliable and available, is usually published with a substantial delay. We report results of using newspapers obituaries to “nowcast” the mortality levels observed in Italy during the COVID-19 outbreak between February 24, 2020 and April 15, 2020. Mortality levels predicted using obituaries outperform forecasts based on past mortality according to several performance metrics, making obituaries a potentially valid alternative source of information to deal with epidemic surveillance.
articolo
2021
Buonanno, Paolo; Puca, Marcello
(2021). Using newspaper obituaries to “nowcast” daily mortality: evidence from the Italian COVID-19 hot-spots [journal article - articolo]. In HEALTH POLICY. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10446/173159
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