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.
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| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8529307 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2021.01.006 | DOI Listing |
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Using newspaper obituaries to "nowcast" daily mortality: Evidence from the Italian COVID-19 hot-spots.
Health Policy
April 2021
University of Bergamo, Italy; Webster University Geneva, Switzerland.
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.
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