Infection fatality ratio and case fatality ratio of COVID-19

The infection fatality ratio (IFR) is the risk of death per infection and is one of the most important epidemiological parameters. Enormous efforts have been undertaken to estimate the IFR for COVID-19. This study examined the pros and cons of several approaches. It is found that the frequently used...

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Autores principales: Luo, Guangze, Zhang, Xingyue, Zheng, Hua, He, Daihai
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of International Society for Infectious Diseases. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8496974/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34628024
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2021.10.004
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author Luo, Guangze
Zhang, Xingyue
Zheng, Hua
He, Daihai
author_facet Luo, Guangze
Zhang, Xingyue
Zheng, Hua
He, Daihai
author_sort Luo, Guangze
collection PubMed
description The infection fatality ratio (IFR) is the risk of death per infection and is one of the most important epidemiological parameters. Enormous efforts have been undertaken to estimate the IFR for COVID-19. This study examined the pros and cons of several approaches. It is found that the frequently used approaches using serological survey results as the denominator and the number of confirmed deaths as the numerator underestimated the true IFR. The most typical examples are South Africa and Peru (before official correction), where the confirmed deaths are one-third of the excess deaths. We argue that the RT-PCR-based case fatality ratio (CFR) is a reliable indicator of the lethality of COVID-19 in locations where testing is extensive. An accurate IFR is crucial for policymaking and public-risk perception.
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spelling pubmed-84969742021-10-08 Infection fatality ratio and case fatality ratio of COVID-19 Luo, Guangze Zhang, Xingyue Zheng, Hua He, Daihai Int J Infect Dis Article The infection fatality ratio (IFR) is the risk of death per infection and is one of the most important epidemiological parameters. Enormous efforts have been undertaken to estimate the IFR for COVID-19. This study examined the pros and cons of several approaches. It is found that the frequently used approaches using serological survey results as the denominator and the number of confirmed deaths as the numerator underestimated the true IFR. The most typical examples are South Africa and Peru (before official correction), where the confirmed deaths are one-third of the excess deaths. We argue that the RT-PCR-based case fatality ratio (CFR) is a reliable indicator of the lethality of COVID-19 in locations where testing is extensive. An accurate IFR is crucial for policymaking and public-risk perception. The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of International Society for Infectious Diseases. 2021-12 2021-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC8496974/ /pubmed/34628024 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2021.10.004 Text en © 2021 The Author(s) 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 Article
Luo, Guangze
Zhang, Xingyue
Zheng, Hua
He, Daihai
Infection fatality ratio and case fatality ratio of COVID-19
title Infection fatality ratio and case fatality ratio of COVID-19
title_full Infection fatality ratio and case fatality ratio of COVID-19
title_fullStr Infection fatality ratio and case fatality ratio of COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed Infection fatality ratio and case fatality ratio of COVID-19
title_short Infection fatality ratio and case fatality ratio of COVID-19
title_sort infection fatality ratio and case fatality ratio of covid-19
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8496974/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34628024
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2021.10.004
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