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A forensic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 cases and COVID-19 mortality misreporting in the Brazilian population

OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to investigate the misreporting number of positively tested individuals for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) succumbed or not to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Brazil at the city, state, and national scales using statistical for...

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Autores principales: Galvêas, D., Barros, F., Fuzo, C.A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society for Public Health. Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8133487/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34182256
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2021.05.010
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author Galvêas, D.
Barros, F.
Fuzo, C.A.
author_facet Galvêas, D.
Barros, F.
Fuzo, C.A.
author_sort Galvêas, D.
collection PubMed
description OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to investigate the misreporting number of positively tested individuals for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) succumbed or not to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Brazil at the city, state, and national scales using statistical forensic analysis. STUDY DESIGN: This is a register-based study over public health data collected, organized, and maintained by the Ministry of Health covering the Brazilian population. METHODS: We evaluated the Brazilian notifications of positively tested cases for SARS-CoV-2 who have succumbed or not to COVID-19 between February 26th to September 7th of 2020 at the city, state, and national scales for conformity to expected distribution provided by Benford's law (BL). RESULTS: Statistical analyzes demonstrated a significant rejection of SARS-CoV-2 notification cases at the city and the number of deaths by COVID-19 in all regional levels according to the hypothesis of conformity to BL. CONCLUSION: We demonstrated by BL, which has been widely applied to query the quality and reliability of different numerical data sources, the misreporting number of cases and deaths throughout the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in Brazil. Therefore, we brought to light pieces of evidence that raise questions about the reliability of SARS-CoV-2 data in Brazil. This situation may have led to inconsistencies in public health policy actions, recommendations, and drastic humanitarian, social, and economic consequences such as the intensive unit care overload in some Brazilian regions.
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spelling pubmed-81334872021-05-20 A forensic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 cases and COVID-19 mortality misreporting in the Brazilian population Galvêas, D. Barros, F. Fuzo, C.A. Public Health Short Communication OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to investigate the misreporting number of positively tested individuals for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) succumbed or not to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in Brazil at the city, state, and national scales using statistical forensic analysis. STUDY DESIGN: This is a register-based study over public health data collected, organized, and maintained by the Ministry of Health covering the Brazilian population. METHODS: We evaluated the Brazilian notifications of positively tested cases for SARS-CoV-2 who have succumbed or not to COVID-19 between February 26th to September 7th of 2020 at the city, state, and national scales for conformity to expected distribution provided by Benford's law (BL). RESULTS: Statistical analyzes demonstrated a significant rejection of SARS-CoV-2 notification cases at the city and the number of deaths by COVID-19 in all regional levels according to the hypothesis of conformity to BL. CONCLUSION: We demonstrated by BL, which has been widely applied to query the quality and reliability of different numerical data sources, the misreporting number of cases and deaths throughout the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in Brazil. Therefore, we brought to light pieces of evidence that raise questions about the reliability of SARS-CoV-2 data in Brazil. This situation may have led to inconsistencies in public health policy actions, recommendations, and drastic humanitarian, social, and economic consequences such as the intensive unit care overload in some Brazilian regions. The Royal Society for Public Health. Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2021-07 2021-05-19 /pmc/articles/PMC8133487/ /pubmed/34182256 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2021.05.010 Text en © 2021 The Royal Society for Public Health. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Short Communication
Galvêas, D.
Barros, F.
Fuzo, C.A.
A forensic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 cases and COVID-19 mortality misreporting in the Brazilian population
title A forensic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 cases and COVID-19 mortality misreporting in the Brazilian population
title_full A forensic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 cases and COVID-19 mortality misreporting in the Brazilian population
title_fullStr A forensic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 cases and COVID-19 mortality misreporting in the Brazilian population
title_full_unstemmed A forensic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 cases and COVID-19 mortality misreporting in the Brazilian population
title_short A forensic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 cases and COVID-19 mortality misreporting in the Brazilian population
title_sort forensic analysis of sars-cov-2 cases and covid-19 mortality misreporting in the brazilian population
topic Short Communication
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8133487/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34182256
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2021.05.010
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