Estimating the SARS-CoV-2 Infection Fatality Rate by Data Combination

The Case of Germany's First Wave

authored by: Thomas Dimpfl, Jantje Sönksen, Ingo Bechmann, Joachim Grammig
Abstract: Assessing the infection fatality rate (IFR) of SARS-CoV-2 in a population is a controversial issue. Due to asymptomatic courses of COVID-19, many infections remain undetected. Reported case fatality rates are therefore poor estimates of the IFR. We propose a strategy to estimate the IFR that combines official data on cases and fatalities with data from seroepidemiological studies in infection hotspots. The application of the method yields an estimate of the IFR of wild-type SARS-CoV-2 in Germany during the first wave of the pandemic of 0.83% (95% CI: [0.69%; 0.98%]), notably higher than the estimate reported in the prominent study by Streeck et al. (2020) (0.36% [0.17%; 0.77%]) and closer to that obtained from a world-wide meta analysis (0.68% [0.53%; 0.82%]), where the difference can be explained by Germany's disadvantageous age structure. Provided that suitable data are available, the proposed method can be applied to estimate the IFR of virus variants and other regions.
External Organisation(s): University of Hohenheim
University of Tübingen
Leipzig University
Type: Article
Journal: Econometrics Journal
Volume: 25
Pages: 515-530
No. of pages: 16
ISSN: 1368-4221
Publication date: 01.05.2022
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Economics and Econometrics
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-199388/v1 (Access: Open)
https://doi.org/10.1093/ectj/utac004 (Access: Open)
: Details in the research portal "Research@Leibniz University"

BibTeX

@article{992cb8f370554bb4b0b5b35056831a68,
title = "Estimating the SARS-CoV-2 Infection Fatality Rate by Data Combination: The Case of Germany's First Wave",
abstract = "Assessing the infection fatality rate (IFR) of SARS-CoV-2 in a population is a controversial issue. Due to asymptomatic courses of COVID-19, many infections remain undetected. Reported case fatality rates are therefore poor estimates of the IFR. We propose a strategy to estimate the IFR that combines official data on cases and fatalities with data from seroepidemiological studies in infection hotspots. The application of the method yields an estimate of the IFR of wild-type SARS-CoV-2 in Germany during the first wave of the pandemic of 0.83% (95% CI: [0.69%; 0.98%]), notably higher than the estimate reported in the prominent study by Streeck et al. (2020) (0.36% [0.17%; 0.77%]) and closer to that obtained from a world-wide meta analysis (0.68% [0.53%; 0.82%]), where the difference can be explained by Germany's disadvantageous age structure. Provided that suitable data are available, the proposed method can be applied to estimate the IFR of virus variants and other regions.",
keywords = "COVID-19 pandemic, health econometrics; pandemic econometrics, Infection fatality rate, SARS-CoV-2",
author = "Thomas Dimpfl and Jantje S{\"o}nksen and Ingo Bechmann and Joachim Grammig",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 Royal Economic Society. Published by Oxford University Press.",
year = "2022",
month = may,
day = "1",
doi = "10.21203/rs.3.rs-199388/v1",
language = "English",
volume = "25",
pages = "515--530",
journal = "Econometrics Journal",
issn = "1368-4221",
publisher = "Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd",
number = "2",
}