Monday effect on confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Japan *

  1. Kuninori Nakagawa
  2. Taro Kanatani

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Abstract

We examined the phenomenon of fewer new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Mondays in Japan, which we refer to as the Monday effect, and reveal the details of this effect. Specifically, we estimated the difference between the number of new positive cases that decreased over the weekend and the number of new confirmed cases that decreased at the beginning of the week. In Japan, prefectures aggregate and announce the number of confirmed daily cases. This analysis allows us to examine whether there is a Monday effect in each prefecture. We show that the Monday effect is due to the decreased number of inspections on the weekend appearing at the beginning of the week due to a time lag. Our results indicate that the administrative system causes delays in some prefectures, and that some prefectures are less likely to conduct screenings on holidays. Our results also suggest that delays generally occur in prefectures with a population of over 2 million. Congestion, Reporting delay, Public health, COVID-19

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  1. Version published to 10.1101/2021.07.20.21260858v2 on medRxiv
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    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.07.20.21260858: (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: 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.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.07.20.21260858v1 on medRxiv