Here is an article right here that shows how many deaths happened in the past.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971219303285In the 2016/2017 flu shot season they lost 24,981 people in Italy due to influenza, mostly elderly. As of April 2, 2020, they're reporting 13,915 deaths in Italy due to COVID-19. It still has a while to go to catch up to the 2017 season.
Now there have been sources stating that the amount of deaths has been under reported. I don't know what to think about that. But their official numbers are within what's normal.
Highlights
In the winter seasons from 2013/14 to 2016/17, an estimated average of 5,290,000 ILI cases occurred in Italy, corresponding to an incidence of 9%.
More than 68,000 deaths attributable to flu epidemics were estimated in the study period.
Italy showed a higher influenza attributable excess mortality compared to other European countries. especially in the elderly.
Abstract
Objectives
In recent years, Italy has been registering peaks in death rates, particularly among the elderly during the winter season. Influenza epidemics have been indicated as one of the potential determinants of such an excess. The objective of our study was to estimate the influenza-attributable contribution to excess mortality during the influenza seasons from 2013/14 to 2016/17 in Italy.
Methods
We used the EuroMomo and the FluMomo methods to estimate the annual trend of influenza-attributable excess death rate by age group. Population data were provided by the National Institute of Statistics, data on influenza like illness and confirmed influenza cases were provided by the National Institutes of Health. As an indicator of weekly influenza activity (IA) we adopted the Goldstein index, which is the product of the percentage of patients seen with influenza-like illness (ILI) and percentage of influenza-positive specimens, in a given week.
Results
We estimated excess deaths of 7,027, 20,259, 15,801 and 24,981 attributable to influenza epidemics in the 2013/14, 2014/15, 2015/16 and 2016/17, respectively, using the Goldstein index. The average annual mortality excess rate per 100,000 ranged from 11.6 to 41.2 with most of the influenza-associated deaths per year registered among the elderly. However children less than 5 years old also reported a relevant influenza attributable excess death rate in the 2014/15 and 2016/17 seasons (1.05/100,000 and 1.54/100,000 respectively).
Conclusions
Over 68,000 deaths were attributable to influenza epidemics in the study period. The observed excess of deaths is not completely unexpected, given the high number of fragile very old subjects living in Italy. In conclusion, the unpredictability of the influenza virus continues to present a major challenge to health professionals and policy makers. Nonetheless, vaccination remains the most effective means for reducing the burden of influenza, and efforts to increase vaccine coverage and the introduction of new vaccine strategies (such as vaccinating healthy children) should be considered to reduce the influenza attributable excess mortality experienced in Italy and in Europe in the last seasons.
