ROME – Thousands of people die every week from Covid-19 in Italy, one of the highest per capita death rates in the West.
One factor, according to Italy’s own government: For weeks Italy has been slow to vaccinate the elderly. While national authorities gave precedence to the elderly and those in nursing homes in addition to primary health workers, regional authorities have given numerous admissions to younger workers.
This contrasts with the UK, where vaccination of the oldest age groups has contributed for the first time to a sharp drop in the number of Covid-19 deaths.
In the last two weeks of March, Italy reported 102 deaths from Covid-19 for every million inhabitants, compared to 47 in Spain, 28 in Germany and 11 in the UK. At the end of March, people 70 years of age or older accounted for 86% of the 107,000 confirmed deaths in Italy from Covid-19.
“If we had vaccinated people over 70 or 75 from the start, we would have prevented so many deaths,” said Antonella Viola, a virologist at the University of Padua.