Percentage of reported Covid-19 cases in Colombia: Estimating the true scale of the pandemic

  1. Nicolás Parra-A
  2. Vladimir Vargas-Calderón
  3. Juan Sebastián Flórez
  4. Leonel Ardila
  5. Carlos Viviescas

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Abstract

At the outbreak of a virus, data on cases is sparse and commonly severe cases, with a higher probability of a fatal resolution, are detected at a larger rate than mild cases. In addition, in an under-sampling situation, the number of total cases is under-estimated leading to a biased case fatality rate estimation, most likely inflating the virus mortality. In this communication, we present a method to estimate the sub-report in a country that accounts for both the delay time between symptoms onset to death and the country’s demographics. The method is based on the comparison of the corrected case fatality rate (CFR) of the target country with the one of a benchmark country. Using reported data from Instituto Nacional de Salud up to December 28, we utilize our method to provide a comprehensive estimate of the Covid-19 sub-report in Colombia, its regions and some of its cities during 2020.

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  1. Version published to 10.1101/2020.12.30.20249052v2 on medRxiv
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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.30.20249052: (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:
    Limitations: Our study makes some assumptions that directly impact the results, therefore, the figures given in this work have to consider the following limitations:

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

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    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.12.30.20249052v1 on medRxiv