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Case fatality risk estimated from routinely collected disease surveillance data: application to COVID–19

Case fatality risk estimated from routinely collected disease surveillance data: application to... Case fatality risk (CFR) is the probability of death among cases of a disease. A crude CFR estimate is the ratio of the number deaths to the number of cases of the disease. This estimate is biased, however, particularly during outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19, because the death time of recent cases is subject to right censoring. Instead, we propose deconvolution methods applied to routinely collected surveillance data of unlinked case and death counts over time. We begin by considering the death series to be the convolution of the case series and the fatality distribution, which is the subdistribution of the time between diagnosis and death. We then use deconvolution methods to estimate this fatality distribution. This provides a CFR estimate together with information about the distribution of time to death. Importantly, this information is extracted without the need to make strong assumptions used in previous analyses. The methods are applied to COVID-19 surveillance data from a range of countries illustrating substantial CFR differences. Simulations show that crude approaches lead to underestimation, particularly early in an outbreak, and that the proposed approach can rectify this bias. An R package called covidSurv is available for implementing the analyses. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Biostatistics & Epidemiology Taylor & Francis

Case fatality risk estimated from routinely collected disease surveillance data: application to COVID–19

Marschner, Ian C.
Biostatistics & Epidemiology , Volume 5 (1): 20 – Jan 2, 2021
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Case fatality risk estimated from routinely collected disease surveillance data: application to COVID–19

Abstract

Case fatality risk (CFR) is the probability of death among cases of a disease. A crude CFR estimate is the ratio of the number deaths to the number of cases of the disease. This estimate is biased, however, particularly during outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19, because the death time of recent cases is subject to right censoring. Instead, we propose deconvolution methods applied to routinely collected surveillance data of unlinked case and death counts over time. We...
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Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2021 International Biometric Society – Chinese Region
ISSN
2470-9379
eISSN
2470-9360
DOI
10.1080/24709360.2021.1913708
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Case fatality risk (CFR) is the probability of death among cases of a disease. A crude CFR estimate is the ratio of the number deaths to the number of cases of the disease. This estimate is biased, however, particularly during outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases such as COVID-19, because the death time of recent cases is subject to right censoring. Instead, we propose deconvolution methods applied to routinely collected surveillance data of unlinked case and death counts over time. We begin by considering the death series to be the convolution of the case series and the fatality distribution, which is the subdistribution of the time between diagnosis and death. We then use deconvolution methods to estimate this fatality distribution. This provides a CFR estimate together with information about the distribution of time to death. Importantly, this information is extracted without the need to make strong assumptions used in previous analyses. The methods are applied to COVID-19 surveillance data from a range of countries illustrating substantial CFR differences. Simulations show that crude approaches lead to underestimation, particularly early in an outbreak, and that the proposed approach can rectify this bias. An R package called covidSurv is available for implementing the analyses.

Journal

Biostatistics & Epidemiology – Taylor & Francis

Published: Jan 2, 2021

Keywords: Case fatality; COVID-19; deconvolution; quasi-likelihood; surveillance data

References

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  • Case fatality: rate, ratio or risk?
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  • Coronavirus disease 2019 case surveillance – United States, January 22–May 30, 2020
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  • Back-projection of COVID-19 diagnosis counts to assess infection incidence and control measures: analysis of Australian data