Estimating the undetected infections in the Covid-19 outbreak by harnessing capture-recapture methods.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

A major open question, affecting the decisions of policy makers, is the estimation of the true number of Covid-19 infections. Most of them are undetected, because of a large number of asymptomatic cases. We provide an efficient, easy to compute and robust lower bound estimator for the number of undetected cases.

Methods

A modified version of the Chao estimator is proposed, based on the cumulative time-series distributions of cases and deaths. Heterogeneity has been addressed by assuming a geometrical distribution underlying the data generation process. An (approximated) analytical variance of the estimator has been derived to compute reliable confidence intervals at 95% level.

Results

A motivating application to the Austrian situation is provided and compar

SUBMITTER: Bohning D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7286831 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature