A novel benchmark for COVID-19 pandemic testing effectiveness enables the accurate prediction of new Intensive Care Unit admissions

  1. Dimitris Nikoloudis
  2. Dimitrios Kountouras
  3. Asimina Hiona

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Abstract

The positivity rate of testing is currently used both as a benchmark of testing adequacy and for assessing the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, since the former is a prerequisite for the latter, its interpretation is often conflicting. We propose as a benchmark for COVID-19 testing effectiveness a new metric, termed ‘Severity Detection Rate’ (SDR), that represents the daily needs for new Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admissions, per 100 cases detected (t-i) days ago, per 10,000 tests performed (t-i) days ago. Based on the announced COVID-19 monitoring data in Greece from May 2020 until August 2021, we show that beyond a certain threshold of daily tests, SDR reaches a plateau of very low variability that begins to reflect testing adequacy. Due to the stabilization of SDR, it was possible to predict with great accuracy the daily needs for new ICU admissions, 12 days ahead of each testing data point, over a period of 10 months, with Pearson r = 0.98 (p = 10 −197 ), RMSE = 7,16. We strongly believe that this metric will help guide the timely decisions of both scientists and government officials to tackle pandemic spread and prevent ICU overload by setting effective testing requirements for accurate pandemic monitoring. We propose further study of this novel metric with data from more countries to confirm the validity of the current findings.

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  1. Version published to 10.1101/2021.02.20.21252138v3 on medRxiv
  2. Version published to 10.1038/s41598-021-99543-y
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.02.20.21252138v2 on medRxiv
  4. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.02.20.21252138: (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.

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  5. Version published to 10.1101/2021.02.20.21252138v1 on medRxiv