Estimating Spot Prevalence of COVID-19 from Daily Death Data in Italy
Ali Raheem
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.17.20037697
Abstract
COVID-19 like many infectious diseases has a variable severity. Due to limited testing capacity for new virus, the majority of infected showing mild or no symptoms it is likely current prevalence data is an underestimate. We present an estimate of the point prevalence of COVID-19 compared to the number of confirmed case in Italy based on the daily death rate and information about the incubation period, time from symptom onset to death and reported case fatality rate. Our model predicts that when the first 3 infected cases had been identified by Italian authorities there were already nearly 30 cases in Italy, and by the 24th of February 2020 only 0.5% cases had been detected and confirmed by Italian authorities. While official statistics had 132 confirmed case we believe a more accurate estimate would be closer to 26000. With a case-doubling period of about 2.5 days.
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