Estimating the Fraction of Unreported Infections in Epidemics with a Known Epicenter: an Application to COVID-19

We develop an analytically tractable method to estimate the fraction of unreported infections in epidemics with a known epicenter and estimate the number of unreported COVID-19 infections in the US during the first half of March 2020. Our method utilizes the covariation in initial reported infection...

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Main Authors: Ali Hortaçsu, Jiarui Liu, Timothy Schwieg
Format: Report
Language:unknown
Subjects:
Iceland
Online Access:http://www.nber.org/papers/w27028.pdf
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spelling ftrepec:oai:RePEc:nbr:nberwo:27028 2024-04-14T08:13:40+00:00 Estimating the Fraction of Unreported Infections in Epidemics with a Known Epicenter: an Application to COVID-19 Ali Hortaçsu Jiarui Liu Timothy Schwieg http://www.nber.org/papers/w27028.pdf unknown http://www.nber.org/papers/w27028.pdf preprint ftrepec 2024-03-19T10:33:40Z We develop an analytically tractable method to estimate the fraction of unreported infections in epidemics with a known epicenter and estimate the number of unreported COVID-19 infections in the US during the first half of March 2020. Our method utilizes the covariation in initial reported infections across US regions and the number of travelers to these regions from the epicenter, along with the results of an early randomized testing study in Iceland. Using our estimates of the number of unreported infections, which are substantially larger than the number of reported infections, we also provide estimates for the infection fatality rate using data on reported COVID-19 fatalities from U.S. counties. Report Iceland RePEc (Research Papers in Economics)
institution Open Polar
collection RePEc (Research Papers in Economics)
op_collection_id ftrepec
language unknown
description We develop an analytically tractable method to estimate the fraction of unreported infections in epidemics with a known epicenter and estimate the number of unreported COVID-19 infections in the US during the first half of March 2020. Our method utilizes the covariation in initial reported infections across US regions and the number of travelers to these regions from the epicenter, along with the results of an early randomized testing study in Iceland. Using our estimates of the number of unreported infections, which are substantially larger than the number of reported infections, we also provide estimates for the infection fatality rate using data on reported COVID-19 fatalities from U.S. counties.
format Report
author Ali Hortaçsu
Jiarui Liu
Timothy Schwieg
spellingShingle Ali Hortaçsu
Jiarui Liu
Timothy Schwieg
Estimating the Fraction of Unreported Infections in Epidemics with a Known Epicenter: an Application to COVID-19
author_facet Ali Hortaçsu
Jiarui Liu
Timothy Schwieg
author_sort Ali Hortaçsu
title Estimating the Fraction of Unreported Infections in Epidemics with a Known Epicenter: an Application to COVID-19
title_short Estimating the Fraction of Unreported Infections in Epidemics with a Known Epicenter: an Application to COVID-19
title_full Estimating the Fraction of Unreported Infections in Epidemics with a Known Epicenter: an Application to COVID-19
title_fullStr Estimating the Fraction of Unreported Infections in Epidemics with a Known Epicenter: an Application to COVID-19
title_full_unstemmed Estimating the Fraction of Unreported Infections in Epidemics with a Known Epicenter: an Application to COVID-19
title_sort estimating the fraction of unreported infections in epidemics with a known epicenter: an application to covid-19
url http://www.nber.org/papers/w27028.pdf
genre Iceland
genre_facet Iceland
op_relation http://www.nber.org/papers/w27028.pdf
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