Study on the effects of the restrictive measures for containment of the COVID-19 pandemic on the reproduction number in Italian regions.

Since November 6th, 2020, Italian regions have been classified according to four levels, corresponding to specific risk scenarios, for which specific restrictive measures have been foreseen. By analyzing the time evolution of the reproduction number , we estimate how much different restrictive measures affect , and we quantify the combined effect of the diffusion of virus variants and the beginning of the vaccination campaign upon the trend. We also compute the time delay between implementation of restrictive measures and the resulting effects.

A study on the possible merits of using symptomatic cases to trace the development of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a recent work, we introduced a novel method to compute the effective reproduction number and we applied it to describe the development of the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. The study is based on the number of daily positive swabs as reported by the Italian Dipartimento di Protezione Civile. Recently, the Italian Istituto Superiore di Sanità made available the data relative of the symptomatic cases, where the reporting date is the date of beginning of symptoms instead of the date of the reporting of the positive swab.

A Statistical Analysis of Death Rates in Italy for the Years 2015-2020 and a Comparison with the Casualties Reported from the COVID-19 Pandemic.

We analyze the data about casualties in Italy in the period 1 January 2015 to 30 September 2020 released by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT). The aim of this article was the description of a statistically robust methodology to extract quantitative values for the seasonal excesses of deaths featured by the data, accompanying them with correct estimates of the relative uncertainties. We will describe the advantages of the method adopted with respect to others listed in literature.

A simplified estimate of the effective reproduction number using its relation with the doubling time and application to Italian COVID-19 data.

A simplified method to compute , the effective reproduction number, is presented. The method relates the value of to the estimation of the doubling time performed with a local exponential fit. The condition corresponds to a growth rate equal to zero or equivalently an infinite doubling time.