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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Health & medicine fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about health & medicine. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

13,677 published reviews in this topic

FactCheck.orgHealth & medicine

“Italia redujo drásticamente el recuento oficial de muertes por COVID-19 del país en más del 97%."

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim originated in online posts that treated a figure about pre-existing conditions among people who died as evidence that Italy had sharply lowered its official COVID-19 death count. FactCheck.org describes the claim as a distortion of an Italian National Institute of Health (ISS) report, not a change to the national death tally. The report covered deaths through October 5 and analyzed medical records for a hospital-patient sample; the country had recorded more than 130,000 COVID-19 deaths by that point, according to the article. The key 2.9% figure referred to the share of sampled people who died without other medical conditions before contracting COVID-19. It did not mean that only 2.9% of deaths were attributable to the disease. The article explains that a conservative Italian publication’s director had described the figure as the share of deaths that were due to COVID-19 alone; a British website then recast the remaining 97.1% as deaths not directly due to COVID-19. That interpretation was later corrected by the website, which acknowledged it was an opinion that conflicted with the report. The article adds evidence about cause of death: the ISS said COVID-19 was the underlying cause in 89% of deaths among people who tested positive for the coronavirus. It also reports that slightly more than 97% of the hospital patients in the sample had at least one comorbidity. These figures concern medical conditions and the role of COVID-19 in deaths; they do not show that Italy reduced its official count.