The record heat of summer 2022 caused more than 61,000 deaths in Europe, 18,000 in Italy alone, the first country in terms of number of victims. And Sardinia, in percentage terms, is the region that recorded the greatest increase in deaths (from all causes) precisely in that torrid summer: other pathologies may have had an influence (and the struggling health system) but sultriness and high temperatures could have been lethal. The growth in deaths on the island in those months is unmatched in any other region. And the province of Cagliari is at the top of this terrible ranking.
The conclusions come from crossing data from the epidemiological analysis of the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, a center supported by the Foundation, la Caixa, in collaboration with the French National Institute of Health, published in Nature Medicine, with those who they come from the Istat tables.
The Spanish study estimated 61,672 heat-attributable deaths between May 30 and September 4, 2022. The data found a 63 per cent increase in heat-related deaths in women, with a total of 35,406 premature deaths, or 145 deaths from million, compared to an estimated 21,667 deaths in men, or 93 per million, with the highest incidence in the Mediterranean region.
And here is Sardinia. In the period considered by the study, there were 5,160 deaths (not only from the heat). The influence of the climatic factor can be seen from the fact that deaths in the summer quarter of 2022 in Sardinia were 31% higher than the average for the five-year period 2015-2019 (the national average variation was 12%), 24% higher compared to 2020 and 14.4% compared to 2021. Except in the last comparison, the island is the region that recorded the greatest increase. With the metropolitan city of Cagliari which, between the summer of 2022 and the same season of the pre-covid five-year period, marks a growth in deaths which stands at 34.8%: no one is worse off.