Infectious Disease Underreporting Is Predicted by Country-Level Preparedness, Politics, and Pathogen Severity.

ABSTRACT: Underreporting of infectious diseases is a pervasive challenge in public health that has emerged as a central issue in characterizing the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic. Infectious diseases are underreported for a range of reasons, including mild or asymptomatic infections, weak public health infrastructure, and government censorship. In this study, we investigated factors associated with cross-country and cross-pathogen variation in reporting. We performed a literature search to collect estimates of empirical reporting rates, calculated as the number of cases reported divided by the estimated number of true cases. This literature search yielded a dataset of reporting rates for 32 pathogens, representing 52 countries. We combined epidemiological and social science theory to identify fac

SUBMITTER: Meadows AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10818036 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul-Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature