Download This PaperUsing Newspapers Obituaries to Forecast Daily Mortality: Evidence from the Italian COVID-19 Hot-Spots
Paolo Buonanno, Marcello Puca, Using newspaper obituaries to “nowcast” daily mortality: Evidence from the Italian COVID-19 hot-spots, Health Policy, Volume 125, Issue 4, 2021, Pages 535-540, ISSN 0168-8510, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2021.01.006.
9 Pages Posted: 10 Jun 2020 Last revised: 29 Apr 2022
Date Written: May 30, 2020
Abstract
Real-time tracking of epidemics helps governments and health authorities to make timely data-driven decisions. Official mortality data, whenever available, may be imperfect and published with a substantial delay. We report the results of using newspapers obituaries to forecast the mortality levels observed in Italy during the COVID-19 outbreak between February 24, 2020 and April 15, 2020. Mortality levels predicted using obituaries outperforms forecasts based on past mortality according to several performance metrics, making obituaries a potentially powerful alternative source of information to deal with epidemics surveillance
Note: Funding: None to declare
Declaration of Interest: None to declare
Keywords: COVID-19; Forecasting; Excess mortality; Big data
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