Valutazione della qualità delle notifiche di decesso associate a COVID-19 riportate al sistema di sorveglianza integrata COVID-19 ISS: confronto con la rilevazione sulle cause di morte dell’Istat e analisi disgiunte. Italia, 2021

Introduction During the first months of 2020, the Istituto Superiore di Sanità (ISS) implemented a surveillance system to monitor the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infections and associated disease (COVID-19) throughout Italy. In this study, data from this surveillance are compared with those detected by the Istat Survey of Deaths and Causes of Deaths for the entire year 2021. Additionally, disjointed analyses are reported. Materials and methods A comparison was made between data from the ISS COVID-19 integrated surveillance system and the database on mortality by cause available from the ISS Statistical Service; cases with ICD-10 codes U071, U072, U099 and U109 were included. The analysis was performed using information on date of death, sex, age (in some cases age group), Region/Autonomous Province (AP) where death was reported, Region/AP of residence or domicile. Results Good agreement was observed between the two flows, despite the fact that for whole of 2021 the number of deaths reported among Istat causes of death (COVID-19 initial cause) was systematically higher than the number of deaths reported to the ISS COVID-19 integrated surveillance system. This difference is mainly due to the fact that some Regions/AP reporting to ISS’ system up to 30% fewer deaths reported among Istat causes of death. Conclusions Overall, the reported analysis shows a good correspondence between the two flows, consistent with what was observed in the year 2020.