Abrupt increase in the UK coronavirus death-case ratio in December 2020

  1. David J Wallace
  2. Graeme J Ackland

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Abstract

1

Objective

to determine the statistical relationship between reported deaths and infections in the UK coronavirus outbreak

Design

Publicly available UK government data is used to determine a relationship between reported cases and deaths, taking into account various UK regions, age profiles and prevalence of the variant of concern (VOC) B.1.1.7.

Main Outcome Measures

Establishing a simple statistical relationship between detected cases and subsequent mortality.

Results

Throughout October and November 2020, deaths in England are well described as 1/55 th of detected cases from 12 days previously. After that, the relationship no longer holds and deaths are significantly higher. This is especially true in regions affected by the VOC B.1.1.7

Conclusions

In early December, some new factor emerged to increase the case-fatality rate in the UK.

Summary Box

What is already known on this topic

The infection-mortality ratio enables one to predict future deaths based on current infections. Incomplete monitoring of infection may be sufficient to predict future trends.

What the study adds

For the specific case of the second wave of coronavirus infection in the UK, we show a clear mathematical relationship between detected infections (positive tests) and subsequent deaths. This relationship begins to fail in December, with unexpectedly high death rates. This may be correlated in time and region with the emergence of the Variant of Concern B 1.1.7.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.21.21250264: (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.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.21.21250264v1 on medRxiv