ArticleFrontiers in public health2021
A Method for Estimating the Number of Infections From the Reported Number of Deaths.
Article in Frontiers in public health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Explaining COVID-19 dynamics through user activity data from digital platforms with Yandex's self-isolation index as a case study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Addressing the Knowledge Deficit in Hospital Bed Planning and Defining an Optimum Region for the Number of Different Types of Hospital Beds in an Effective Health Care System.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Review
- A Statistical Model of COVID-19 Infection Incidence in the Southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- A Comparison of Germany and the United Kingdom Indicates That More SARS-CoV-2 Circulation and Less Restrictions in the Warm Season Might Reduce Overall COVID-19 Burden.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
At the outset of an epidemic, available case data typically underestimate the total number of infections due to insufficient testing, potentially hampering public responses. Here, we present a method for statistically estimating the true number of cases with confidence intervals from the reported number of deaths and estimates of the infection fatality ratio; assuming that the time from infection to death follows a known distribution. While the method is applicable to any epidemic with a significant mortality rate, we exemplify the method by applying it to COVID-19. Our findings indicate that the number of unreported COVID-19 infections in March 2020 was likely to be at least one order of magnitude higher than the reported cases, with the degree of underestimation among the countries considered being particularly high in the United Kingdom.
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