Temperature-mortality association during and before the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy: A nationwide time-stratified case-crossover study

Objectives: To identify the associations of temperature with non-COVID-19 mortality and all-cause mortality in the pandemic 2020 in comparison with the non-COVID-19 period in Italy. Methods: The data on 3,189,790 all-cause deaths (including 3,134,137 non-COVID-19 deaths) and meteorological conditions in 107 Italian provinces between February 1st and November 30th in each year of 2015-2020 were collected. We employed a time-stratified case-crossover study design combined with the distributed lag non-linear model to investigate the relationships of temperature with all-cause and non-COVID-19 mortality in the pandemic and non-pandemic periods. Results: Cold temperature exposure contributed higher risks for both all-cause and non-COVID-19 mortality in the pandemic period in 2020 than in 2015-2019. However, no different change was found for the impacts of heat. The relative risk (RR) of non-COVID-19 deaths and all-cause mortality at extremely cold (2 degrees C) in comparison with the estimated minimum mortality temperature (19 degrees C) in 2020 were 1.63 (95% CI: 1.55-1.72) and 1.45 (95%CI: 1.31-1.61) respectively, which were higher than all-cause mortality risk in 2015-2019 with RR of 1.19 (95%CI: 1.17-1.21). Conclusion: Cold exposure indicated stronger impacts than high temperatures on all-cause and non-COVID-19 mortality in the pandemic year 2020 compared to its counterpart period in 2015-2019 in Italy.

Automated summary

In Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, cold temperatures were found to have a stronger impact on all-cause and non-COVID-19 mortality compared to the period before the pandemic (2015-2019), while there was no significant change in the effects of heat on mortality risk.