ArticleCanadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique2020
It can be dangerous to take epidemic curves of COVID-19 at face value.
Article in Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Undetected circulation of monkeypox virus in Portugal: Evidence for a 50-day gap before first detection.Global epidemiology · 2026Article
- The Current and Future Burden of Long COVID in the United States.The Journal of infectious diseases · 2025Article
- A Bayesian approach to estimating COVID-19 incidence and infection fatality rates.Biostatistics (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- Occupational risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection: a nationwide register-based study of the Danish workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020-2021.Occupational and environmental medicine · 2023Article
- Limitations of COVID-19 testing and case data for evidence-informed health policy and practice.Health research policy and systems · 2023Review
- Further Improving Analysis of Date-Based COVID-19 Surveillance Data.American journal of public health · 2022Article
- Effect of Adjustment for Case Misclassification and Infection Date Uncertainty on Estimates of COVID-19 Effective Reproduction Number.Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2021Article
- Infection and death by COVID-19 in a cohort of healthcare workers in Mexico.Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health · 2021Article
- A network-based model to explore the role of testing in the epidemiological control of the COVID-19 pandemic.BMC infectious diseases · 2021Article
- Article
- On testing for infections during epidemics, with application to Covid-19 in Ontario, Canada.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2021Article
- On the importance of early testing even when imperfect in a pandemic such as COVID-19.Global epidemiology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
During an epidemic with a new virus, we depend on modelling to plan the response: but how good are the data? The aim of our work was to better understand the impact of misclassification errors in identification of true cases of COVID-19 on epidemic curves. Data originated from Alberta, Canada (available on 28 May 2020). There is presently no information of sensitivity (Sn) and specificity (Sp) of laboratory tests used in Canada for the causal agent for COVID-19. Therefore, we examined best attainable performance in other jurisdictions and similar viruses. This suggested perfect Sp and Sn 60-95%. We used these values to re-calculate epidemic curves to visualize the potential bias due to imperfect testing. If the sensitivity improved, the observed and adjusted epidemic curves likely fall within 95% confidence intervals of the observed counts. However, bias in shape and peak of the epidemic curves can be pronounced, if sensitivity either degrades or remains poor in the 60-70% range. These issues are minor early in the epidemic, but hundreds of undiagnosed cases are likely later on. It is therefore hazardous to judge progress of the epidemic based on observed epidemic curves unless quality of testing is better understood.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.