A Covid-19 case mortality rate without time delay systematics

  1. Richard Lieu
  2. Siobhan Quenby
  3. Ally Bi-Zhu Jiang

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Abstract

Concerning the two approaches to the Covid-19 case mortality rate published in the literature, namely computing the ratio of (a) the daily number of deaths to a time delayed daily number of confirmed infections; and (b) the cumulative number of deaths to confirmed infections up to a certain time, both numbers having been acquired in the middle of an outbreak, it is shown that each suffers from systematic error of a different source. We further show that in the absence of detailed knowledge of the time delay distribution of (a), the true case mortality rate is obtained by pursuing method (b) at the end of the outbreak when the fate of every case has decisively been rendered. The approach is then employed to calculate the mean case mortality rate of 13 regions of China where every case has already been resolved. This leads to a mean rate of 0.527 ± 0.001 %.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.31.20049452: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.03.31.20049452v1 on medRxiv