Estimating geographic variation of infection fatality ratios during epidemics.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

We aim to estimate geographic variability in total numbers of infections and infection fatality ratios (IFR; the number of deaths caused by an infection per 1,000 infected people) when the availability and quality of data on disease burden are limited during an epidemic.

Methods

We develop a noncentral hypergeometric framework that accounts for differential probabilities of positive tests and reflects the fact that symptomatic people are more likely to seek testing. We demonstrate the robustness, accuracy, and precision of this framework, and apply it to the United States (U.S.) COVID-19 pandemic to estimate county-level SARS-CoV-2 IFRs.

Results

The estimators for the numbers of infections and IFRs showed high accuracy and precision; for instance, when appl

SUBMITTER: Ladau J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10990719 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature