A Design and Analytical Strategy for Monitoring Disease Positivity and Biomarker Levels in Accessible Closed Populations.

ABSTRACT: In this paper, we advocate and expand upon a previously described monitoring strategy for efficient and robust estimation of disease prevalence and case numbers within closed and enumerated populations such as schools, workplaces, or retirement communities. The proposed design relies largely on voluntary testing, which is notoriously biased (e.g., in the case of coronavirus disease 2019) due to nonrepresentative sampling. The approach yields unbiased and comparatively precise estimates with no assumptions about factors underlying selection of individuals for voluntary testing, building on the strength of what can be a small random sampling component. This component enables the use of a recently proposed "anchor stream" estimator, a well-calibrated alternative to classical capture-recapture

SUBMITTER: Lyles RH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10773487 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature