Estimating COVID-19 infection fatality rate in Mumbai during 2020

  1. Murad Banaji

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Abstract

The aim of this piece is to provide estimates of the infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVID-19 in Mumbai during 2020, namely the fraction of SARS-CoV-2 infections which resulted in death. Estimates are presented for slums and nonslum areas, and for the city as a whole. These are based largely on the city’s official COVID-19 fatality data, seroprevalence data, and all-cause mortality data. Using recorded COVID-19 fatalities in the numerator, we obtain IFR estimates of 0.13%-0.17%. On the other hand, using excess deaths we obtain IFR estimates of 0.28%-0.40%. The estimates based on excess deaths are broadly consistent with the city’s age structure, and meta-analyses of COVID-19 age-stratified IFR. If excess deaths were largely from COVID-19, then only around half of COVID-19 deaths were officially recorded in the city. The analysis indicates that levels of excess mortality in excess deaths per 1000 population were similar in the city’s slums and nonslum areas. On the other hand the estimated ratio of excess deaths to official COVID-19 deaths in the slums was much higher than in nonslum areas, suggesting much weaker COVID-19 death reporting from the slums.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.08.21255101: (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 10.1101/2021.04.08.21255101 on medRxiv