Nowcasting fatal COVID-19 infections on a regional level in Germany.
Biom J
; 63(3): 471-489, 2021 03.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-935001
ABSTRACT
We analyse the temporal and regional structure in mortality rates related to COVID-19 infections, making use of the openly available data on registered cases in Germany published by the Robert Koch Institute on a daily basis. Estimates for the number of present-day infections that will, at a later date, prove to be fatal are derived through a nowcasting model, which relates the day of death of each deceased patient to the corresponding day of registration of the infection. Our district-level modelling approach for fatal infections disentangles spatial variation into a global pattern for Germany, district-specific long-term effects and short-term dynamics, while also taking the age and gender structure of the regional population into account. This enables to highlight areas with unexpectedly high disease activity. The analysis of death counts contributes to a better understanding of the spread of the disease while being, to some extent, less dependent on testing strategy and capacity in comparison to infection counts. The proposed approach and the presented results thus provide reliable insight into the state and the dynamics of the pandemic during the early phases of the infection wave in spring 2020 in Germany, when little was known about the disease and limited data were available.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
COVID-19
Type of study:
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Adult
/
Aged
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
/
Middle aged
Country/Region as subject:
Europa
Language:
English
Journal:
Biom J
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Bimj.202000143
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