Use of Unofficial Newspaper Data for COVID-19 Death Surveillance

  1. Mazbahul G. Ahamad
  2. Monir U. Ahmed
  3. Byomkesh Talukder
  4. Fahian Tanin

Reviewed by

Read the full article

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

Objective

To highlight the critical importance of unofficially reported newspaper-based deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)–like illness (CLI) together with officially confirmed death counts to support improvements in COVID-19 death surveillance.

Methods

Both hospital-based official COVID-19 and unofficial CLI death counts were collected from daily newspapers between March 8 and August 22, 2020. We performed both exploratory and time-series analyses to understand the influence of combining newspaper-based CLI death counts with confirmed hospital death counts on the trends and forecasting of COVID-19 death counts. An autoregressive integrated moving average–based approach was used to forecast the number of weekly death counts for six weeks ahead.

Results

Between March 8 and August 22, 2020, 2,156 CLI deaths were recorded based on newspaper reporting for a count that was 55% of the officially confirmed death count (n = 3,907). This shows that newspaper reports tend to cover a significant number of COVID-19 related deaths. Our forecast also indicates an approximate total of 406 CLI expected for the six weeks ahead, which could contribute to a total of 2,413 deaths including 2,007 confirmed deaths expected from August 23 to October 3, 2020.

Conclusions

Analyzing existing trends in and forecasting the expected number of newspaper-based CLI deaths indicates yet-unreported COVID-19 death counts, which could be a critical source to estimate provisional COVID-19 death counts and mortality surveillance.

Public Health Implications

Considering unofficial newspaper-based CLI death counts is essential to identify COVID-19 death severity and surveillance needs to advance public health research efforts to prepare appropriate response strategies for low- and middle-income countries.

Article activity feed

  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.09.09.20191569: (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

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Statistical analysis was carried out using Stata version 16.1.9
    Stata
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Limitations: The potential limitations of this research should be considered when adopting newspaper-based mortality surveillance. First, newspapers cannot cover all CLI death throughout a country if the number is very high as has been the case in Italy or the United States. Second, reported CLI deaths are not adjusted with ILI deaths and adjustment estimates and guidelines are unavailable in many LMICs, including Bangladesh. Third, very few LMICs have the institutional and other necessary capacities to rigorously analyze newspaper death-reporting, which may restrict them from adopting newspaper-based mortality assessment and surveillance. Public health implications: Because of significant reporting gaps between official and unofficial COVID-19 mortality data in many LMICs, policymakers and public health researchers should be concerned about confirmed, CLI, and ILI death counts. An inaccurate or incomplete understanding of these numbers could generate incorrect mortality and forecasting discrepancies and could affect pandemic preparedness and response strategies. By developing an all-inclusive mortality data surveillance and reporting approach using both hospital and newspaper data, public health authorities could better inform and guide national response and recovery planning to limit the impact of COVID-19, which remains a major public health policy concern in many LMICs.

    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.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.09.09.20191569v1 on medRxiv