Covid, it’s not over yet

According to weekly bulletin on infections and deaths caused by Covid, in the last week there has been a 30% increase in deaths. A number that if read like this could suggest a surge in cases. Instead, reading in more detail, we went from 7 to 9 people who lost their lives. A bulletin that risks cause unjustified alarmism and against whom he lashed out Matteo Bassetti, director of Infectious Diseases at the San Martino Polyclinic in Genoa. “The weekly Covid bulletin is today anachronistic, misleading and useless. No more Covid bulletins. We need to turn the page” he wrote on X.

One year after the declaration of end of emergency by the World Health Organization, on May 5, 2023, Bassetti’s fear is that a psychosis will be triggered for an enemy that is not so strong at the moment: “You cannot see a Covid bulletin in which there is talk of a 30% increase in deaths, from 7 to 9 deaths: it is anachronistic, wrong, erroneous. Let’s go and see what happens with Covid-19 and we don’t seem to care what happens with the flu, with the pneumococcus, with the klebsiella infection, with hemophilus, what happens with the metapneumovirus. Then we should make a report for everything, otherwise we will continue in the error. 2020, 2021, 2022 was one thing, it’s another thing to continue with these reports today. It is absurd that today, with these numbers, there are still headlines talking about Covid. The weekly bulletin it must be stoppedis senseless and only fuels conspiracy theories.”

The thesis of the director of the infectious diseases department of Genoa is supported Maria Rita Gismondo: “No more weekly bulletins on Covid, I don’t know who they need“. The director of the Laboratory of clinical microbiology, virology and bioemergency diagnostics at the Sacco hospital in Milan is very harsh: “The bulletin it never made sense. It didn’t have it when communicating with inaccurate data during the pandemic, it doesn’t have it now that the pandemic is over. The bulletin is not a snapshot of what happened during the week, due to gaps due to data collection.”