Temporal rise in the proportion of younger adults and older adolescents among coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases following the introduction of physical distancing measures, Germany, March to April 2020

Abstract

Using data on coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in Germany from the Robert Koch Institute, we found a relative increase with time in the prevalence in 15–34 year-olds (particularly 20–24-year-olds) compared with 35–49- and 10–14-year-olds (we excluded older and younger ages because of different healthcare seeking behaviour). This suggests an elevated role for that age group in propagating the epidemic following the introduction of physical distancing measures.

SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.08.20058719: (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:

Our paper has some limitations. One limitation is that the ratio between the number of detected COVID-19 cases and incident cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection (case-detection rate) may vary with time in each age group. We believe that it is unlikely that this phenomenon is more pronounced for individuals aged 15-34y compared to persons aged 35-49 or 10-14y, namely that increases in the likelihood of seeking medical care or the likelihood of being tested for individuals aged 15-34y are substantially larger compared to individuals aged 35-49y or 10-14y. Therefor, the observed temporal increases in the relative share of individuals aged 15-34y among detected COVID-19 cases in persons aged 10-49y should be indicative of the actual increase in the prevalence of individuals aged 15-34y among SARS-CoV-2 infections in the German population aged 10-49y. Another limitation is the uncertainty regarding the relation between the temporal rise in the share of a given age group among SARS-CoV-2 cases and the role that this age group plays in propagating the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic. Some of the factors supporting that relation are described in the 2nd paragraph of the Introduction. Additionally, data on mixing patterns in different age groups during regular times [2], as well as some evidence about the current social interactions of younger adults/older adolescents suggests that those age groups are expected to have the largest role in driving the current SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks, which is indeed support...

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.
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No protocol registration statement was detected.

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Temporal rise in the proportion of younger adults and older adolescents among coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases following the introduction of physical distancing measures, Germany, March to April 2020

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