Officially Confirmed COVID-19 and Unreported COVID-19–Like Illness Death Counts: An Assessment of Reporting Discrepancy in Bangladesh

  1. Mazbahul G. Ahamad
  2. Fahian Tanin
  3. Byomkesh Talukder
  4. Monir U. Ahmed

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Abstract

Reporting discrepancies between officially confirmed COVID-19 death counts and unreported COVID-19–like illness (CLI) death counts have been evident across the world, including Bangladesh. Publicly available data were used to explore the differences between confirmed COVID-19 death counts and deaths with possible COVID-19 symptoms between March 2, 2020 and August 22, 2020. Unreported CLI death counts totaled more than half of the confirmed COVID-19 death counts during the study period. However, the reporting authority did not consider CLI deaths, which might produce incomplete and unreliable COVID-19 data and respective mortality rates. All deaths with possible COVID-19 symptoms need to be included in provisional death counts to better estimate the COVID-19 mortality rate and to develop data-driven COVID-19 response strategies. An urgent initiative is needed to prepare a comprehensive guideline for reporting COVID-19 deaths.

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  1. Version published to 10.4269/ajtmh.20-1205
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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.20.20158139: (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.

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    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.

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    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.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.07.20.20158139v2 on medRxiv
  4. Version published to 10.1101/2020.07.20.20158139v1 on medRxiv
  5. Version published to 10.20944/preprints202007.0526.v1