Related papers: Combining Population and Study Data for Inference …

The determination of the infection fatality rate (IFR) for the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is a key aim for many of the field studies that are currently being undertaken in response to the pandemic. The IFR together with the basic…

Superspreading complicates the study of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. I propose a model for aggregated case data that accounts for superspreading and improves statistical inference. In a Bayesian framework, the model is estimated on German data…

SARS-CoV-2 has disrupted the life of billions of people around the world since the first outbreak was officially declared in China at the beginning of 2020. Yet, important questions such as how deadly it is or its degree of spread within…

Using recent data from voluntary mass testing, I provide credible bounds on prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 for Austrian counties in early December 2020. When estimating prevalence, a natural missing data problem arises: no test results are…

There are many sources of data giving information about the number of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the population, but all have major drawbacks, including biases and delayed reporting. For example, the number of confirmed cases largely…

Different ways of calculating mortality ratios during epidemics have yielded very different results, particularly during the current COVID-19 pandemic. We formulate both a survival probability model and an associated infection…

In February 2020 the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2 was reported in Germany. Since then the local public health offices have been responsible to monitor and react to the dynamics of the pandemic. One of their major tasks is to…

In this paper a Bayesian SEIR model is studied to estimate the proportion of the population infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19. To capture heterogeneity in the population and the effect of interventions to reduce…

As a consequence of missing data on tests for infection and imperfect accuracy of tests, reported rates of population infection by the SARS CoV-2 virus are lower than actual rates of infection. Hence, reported rates of severe illness…

A key challenge in estimating the infection fatality rate (IFR) -- and its relation with various factors of interest -- is determining the total number of cases. The total number of cases is not known because not everyone is tested, but…

The infection fatality rate (IFR) of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is one of the most discussed figures in the context of this pandemic. Using German COVID-19 surveillance data and age-group specific IFR estimates from multiple…

The COVID-19 infection fatality rate (IFR) is the proportion of individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 who subsequently die. As COVID-19 disproportionately affects older individuals, age-specific IFR estimates are imperative to facilitate…

A primary quantity of interest in the study of infectious diseases is the average number of new infections that an infected person produces. This so-called reproduction number has significant implications for the disease progression. There…

Understanding how widely COVID-19 has spread is critical for examining the pandemic's progression. Despite efforts to carefully monitor the pandemic, the number of confirmed cases may underestimate the total number of infections. We…

Mechanistic models fit to streaming surveillance data are critical to understanding the transmission dynamics of an outbreak as it unfolds in real-time. However, transmission model parameter estimation can be imprecise, and sometimes even…

Measuring the prevalence of active SARS-CoV-2 infections in the general population is difficult because tests are conducted on a small and non-random segment of the population. However, people admitted to the hospital for non-COVID reasons…

Knowing the infection fatality ratio (IFR) is of crucial importance for evidence-based epidemic management: for immediate planning; for balancing the life years saved against the life years lost due to the consequences of management; and…

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has necessitated mitigation efforts around the world. We use only reported deaths in the two weeks after the first death to determine infection parameters, in order to make predictions of hidden variables such as the…

In this paper, we consider a discrete-time stochastic SIR model, where the transmission rate and the true number of infectious individuals are random and unobservable. An advantage of this model is that it permits us to account for random…

The infection fatality rate (IFR) of COVID-19 is one of the measures of disease impact that can be of importance for policy making. Here we show that many of the studies on which these estimates are based are scientifically flawed for…