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By how much did the government of Italy recently reduce the nation's official Covid-19 death count?

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A recent article on an Italian website has generated headlines like "Italian Institute of Health Drastically Reduces Its Official Covid Death Toll Number." The article then claims that the agency "reduced the country's official Covid death toll number by over 97 per cent after changing the definition of a fatality to someone who died from Covid rather than with Covid." However, the primary source for this claim, a report by an Italian government health agency, says nothing about revising the C-19 death count. Instead, it states, "Overall, 2.9% of the sample presented with a no comorbidities, 11.4% with a single comorbidity, 18.0% with 2, and 67.7% with 3 or more." Fatal interactions between Covid-19 and other ailments like heart disease and diabetes make it difficult to determine the exact death toll from C-19. However, a range of evidence suggests that the CDC's tally of Covid-19 deaths may be modestly inflated but still provides a reasonable measure of the pandemic's severity.





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