Relation of Doubling Time and Reproduction Number with Testing Rate for Corona Infections in India
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Abstract
There is a general feeling that increased testing has a salutary effect on the course of the current coronavirus epidemic. We quantify the relationship of testing rate with the doubling time and reproduction number in India, estimate the effect, and use these relationships to make projections for the near future.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.29.20184283: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Many previous publications have not even considered this as a limitation. Third, testing includes the RT-PCR test, which is considered the gold standard, but also, particularly recently, the rapid antigen tests which are known to have substantial false negative results9. However, our focus in this communication is on testing per se …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.29.20184283: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Many previous publications have not even considered this as a limitation. Third, testing includes the RT-PCR test, which is considered the gold standard, but also, particularly recently, the rapid antigen tests which are known to have substantial false negative results9. However, our focus in this communication is on testing per se without considering the type of test. Fourthly, we are using doubling time to calculate the period reproduction number. Our calculations are for the rate of increase of infections in the infectious period per infected person. This is the improvisation we are suggesting as a replacement of the intricate calculations of reproduction number. Our method found a reproduction number of 5.66 in the first week of April compare to 1.29 obtained by Marimutu et a10 for India. Considering the rapid rate of rise of infections at that time, 1.29 does not look like a realistic estimate. Our calculations show that the reproduction number even rose to 10.08 later that week because of a sudden jump in cases at that time. This feature was not captured by this previous article on reproduction number. Ours is based on infectious period of 10 days but Marimutu et al. have not specified this period. Despite such limitations of the study, we may not have faltered in our results for the reason already stated for each limitation.
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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