Cargando…
Robust estimates of the true (population) infection rate for COVID-19: a backcasting approach
Differences in COVID-19 testing and tracing across countries, as well as changes in testing within each country over time, make it difficult to estimate the true (population) infection rate based on the confirmed number of cases obtained through RNA viral testing. We applied a backcasting approach t...
Autores principales: | , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society
2020
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7735365/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33391791 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.200909 |
_version_ | 1783622632213577728 |
---|---|
author | Phipps, Steven J. Grafton, R. Quentin Kompas, Tom |
author_facet | Phipps, Steven J. Grafton, R. Quentin Kompas, Tom |
author_sort | Phipps, Steven J. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Differences in COVID-19 testing and tracing across countries, as well as changes in testing within each country over time, make it difficult to estimate the true (population) infection rate based on the confirmed number of cases obtained through RNA viral testing. We applied a backcasting approach to estimate a distribution for the true (population) cumulative number of infections (infected and recovered) for 15 developed countries. Our sample comprised countries with similar levels of medical care and with populations that have similar age distributions. Monte Carlo methods were used to robustly sample parameter uncertainty. We found a strong and statistically significant negative relationship between the proportion of the population who test positive and the implied true detection rate. Despite an overall improvement in detection rates as the pandemic has progressed, our estimates showed that, as at 31 August 2020, the true number of people to have been infected across our sample of 15 countries was 6.2 (95% CI: 4.3–10.9) times greater than the reported number of cases. In individual countries, the true number of cases exceeded the reported figure by factors that range from 2.6 (95% CI: 1.8–4.5) for South Korea to 17.5 (95% CI: 12.2–30.7) for Italy. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7735365 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | The Royal Society |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-77353652020-12-31 Robust estimates of the true (population) infection rate for COVID-19: a backcasting approach Phipps, Steven J. Grafton, R. Quentin Kompas, Tom R Soc Open Sci Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology Differences in COVID-19 testing and tracing across countries, as well as changes in testing within each country over time, make it difficult to estimate the true (population) infection rate based on the confirmed number of cases obtained through RNA viral testing. We applied a backcasting approach to estimate a distribution for the true (population) cumulative number of infections (infected and recovered) for 15 developed countries. Our sample comprised countries with similar levels of medical care and with populations that have similar age distributions. Monte Carlo methods were used to robustly sample parameter uncertainty. We found a strong and statistically significant negative relationship between the proportion of the population who test positive and the implied true detection rate. Despite an overall improvement in detection rates as the pandemic has progressed, our estimates showed that, as at 31 August 2020, the true number of people to have been infected across our sample of 15 countries was 6.2 (95% CI: 4.3–10.9) times greater than the reported number of cases. In individual countries, the true number of cases exceeded the reported figure by factors that range from 2.6 (95% CI: 1.8–4.5) for South Korea to 17.5 (95% CI: 12.2–30.7) for Italy. The Royal Society 2020-11-18 /pmc/articles/PMC7735365/ /pubmed/33391791 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.200909 Text en © 2020 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology Phipps, Steven J. Grafton, R. Quentin Kompas, Tom Robust estimates of the true (population) infection rate for COVID-19: a backcasting approach |
title | Robust estimates of the true (population) infection rate for COVID-19: a backcasting approach |
title_full | Robust estimates of the true (population) infection rate for COVID-19: a backcasting approach |
title_fullStr | Robust estimates of the true (population) infection rate for COVID-19: a backcasting approach |
title_full_unstemmed | Robust estimates of the true (population) infection rate for COVID-19: a backcasting approach |
title_short | Robust estimates of the true (population) infection rate for COVID-19: a backcasting approach |
title_sort | robust estimates of the true (population) infection rate for covid-19: a backcasting approach |
topic | Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7735365/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33391791 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.200909 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT phippsstevenj robustestimatesofthetruepopulationinfectionrateforcovid19abackcastingapproach AT graftonrquentin robustestimatesofthetruepopulationinfectionrateforcovid19abackcastingapproach AT kompastom robustestimatesofthetruepopulationinfectionrateforcovid19abackcastingapproach |