The more than 170,000 positives detected on January 4 lead the mathematical models to predict more than 200,000 daily cases within the week. However, it is clear that the epidemic in Italy "is still booming", with a growth rate that is too high to predict when the peak will arrive, observes physicist Giorgio Sestili, founder of the Facebook page 'Coronavirus-Scientific data and analysis '.
Despite the closure of schools and the slowdown in activities for the Christmas holidays, in the last 7 days there has been a 151% increase in cases compared to the previous 7 days. "It is therefore possible that we find ourselves in a condition of underestimation of the cases, even if the conditional is a must", specifies the expert.
The record number of tampons on January 4 was over 1.2 million, "higher than those we are used to, but in the coming weekdays it is destined to increase further, because the positivity rate is very high: if before a pharmacy found one positive for every 10 swabs, now it finds one every 4. It is therefore likely that the cases are currently still underestimated due to the holidays: if we did more swabs, we would find still others ".
The number of deaths of January 4, 259 remains difficult to interpret. "It is a fact that we must take with caution", says Sestili. "It is possible that it is the result of the usual 'adjustment' of the data that were not recorded on holidays: it would be difficult to explain otherwise".
The positive fact, according to the physicist, "is that hospital pressure is not increasing in proportion to the growth of positives. Something has changed compared to previous waves: vaccines are giving us a great help, but alone they are not enough to explain this. phenomenon. It could be another indication that the Omicron variant is less lethal than the previous ones. "