Covid-19: the effects of the Italian red zones on mortality

Abstract

The analysis based on diff in diff method concerns municipalities of the Lodi, Bergamo, Cremona provinces: in particular, we use data on overall mortality, not those on Covid-19 related deaths. We start off from a common trend hypothesis between means in overall deaths (per 10,000 inhabitants) in the Red Zone municipalities and in the adjacent towns belonging to the Bergamo, Lodi, Cremona provinces for which daily availability is warranted. Our results explain that establishing a Red Zone has been effective in reducing deaths in the very short term as it helped reducing pressures on health facilities which were not used to cope with this type of disease during the first “Wuhan” wave.