Assessing the impact of data-driven limitations on tracing and forecasting the outbreak dynamics of COVID-19.

ABSTRACT: The availability of the epidemiological data strongly affects the reliability of several mathematical models in tracing and forecasting COVID-19 pandemic, hampering a fair assessment of their relative performance. The marked difference between the lethality of the virus when comparing the first and second waves is an evident sign of the poor reliability of the data, also related to the variability over time in the number of performed swabs. During the early epidemic stage, swabs were made only to patients with severe symptoms taken to hospital or intensive care unit. Thus, asymptomatic people, not seeking medical assistance, remained undetected. Conversely, during the second wave of infection, total infectives included also a percentage of detected asymptomatic infectives, being tested due

SUBMITTER: Fiscon G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8285363 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature