More than 99 percent of those who have died in Italy from COVID-19 coronavirus had pre-existing medical conditions, a new study has found.
The study was completed by the country's health officials into 355 deaths and was publicly released on Tuesday.
The results showed only three of the deceased did not have health issues before they became infected.
The three most common medical conditions were high blood pressure (75 percent), Diabetes (35 percent) and heart disease (33 percent).
Other medical conditions they had were strokes, dementia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, active cancer in the past five years, chronic liver disease, and chronic renal failure.
Nearly half of those in the study (48.5 percent) had three or more pre-existing conditions.
Italy has recently seen a spike in deaths, overtaking China's death toll. There have been over 41,000 cases of coronavirus in Italy, 3,405 deaths and 4,440 recoveries.
The new study provides insight into Italy’s high death rate, which has seen 8 percent of patients die while worldwide only 4 percent of cases have resulted in death, the New York Post reported.
The median age of the deceased was much higher at 80.5 than the median of those who just had the infection at 63.
The study also found the median age of women who died from coronavirus was 83.7 while men were at 79.5.
As of March 17, 17 patients under the age of 50 had died from COVID-19. The five patients younger than 40 all had serious pre-existing conditions.
Overall it took an average of eight days between the onset of symptoms and death.
