Hospitalization as reliable indicator of second wave COVID-19 pandemic in eight European countries
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Abstract
Time dependent reproduction number ( R t ) is one of the most popular parameters to track the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. However, especially at the initial stages, R t can be highly underestimated because of remarkable differences between the actual number of infected people and the daily incidence of people who are tested positive. Here, we present the analysis of daily cumulative number of hospitalized (HP) and intensive care unit (ICU) patients both in space and in time in the early phases of second wave COVID-19 pandemic across eight different European countries, namely Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and United Kingdom. We derive simple model equations to fit the time dependence of these two variables where exponential behavior is observed. Growth rate constants of HP and ICU are listed, providing country-specific parameters able to estimate the burden of SARS-COV-2 infection before extensive containment measures take place. Our quantitative parameters, fully related to hospitalizations, are disentangled from the capacity range of the screening campaign, for example the number of swabs, and they cannot be directly biased by the actual number of infected people. This approach can give an array of reliable indicators which can be used by governments and healthcare systems to monitor the dynamics of COVID-19 epidemic.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.31.20249084: (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:It should be noted that the only limitation in the use of the parameters related to the hospitalization of COVID-19 patients is the delay of these indices with respect to the actual situation (Garcia-Basteiro et al., 2020). However, it has been reported that this delay is less pronounced than those relating to deaths caused by the virus …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.31.20249084: (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:It should be noted that the only limitation in the use of the parameters related to the hospitalization of COVID-19 patients is the delay of these indices with respect to the actual situation (Garcia-Basteiro et al., 2020). However, it has been reported that this delay is less pronounced than those relating to deaths caused by the virus (Garcia-Basteiro et al., 2020). Finally, Ricu represents the “conversion rate” between HP and ICU (i.e., hospitalized patients who subsequently need to be transferred to intensive care units) and, together with Nicu could be used to (roughly) evaluate the efficiency of the first-level health care (home therapy and prompt hospitalization), albeit indirectly. Nicu depends more on the intrinsic dynamics of the COVID-19 epidemic (albeit conditioned by government measures and socio-demographic and environmental characteristics) than effectiveness of the health system. When both Nicu and Ricu are high, the ICU (the number of patients in intensive care units) depends on the large number of hospitalized patients according to the above linear relationship between HP and ICU assuming an adequate first-level health care. Vice versa, when Nicu is high and Ricu is low, the health system is probably inadequate and the high ICU can depend on the high number of patients admitted directly to intensive care, due to insufficient home therapy and / or delayed hospitalization.
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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