Covid-19 : Infection Fatality Rate

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The infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data

John Ioannidis

Departments of Medicine, of Epidemiology and Population Health, of Biomedical Data Science, and of Statistics and Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS), Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA - E-mail: jioannid@stanford.edu

Funding: METRICS has been supported by a grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation Conflicts of interest: None

This article is a preprint and has not been certified by peer review [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.

Abstract

Objective To estimate the infection fatality rate of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) from data of seroprevalence studies. Methods Population studies with sample size of at least 500 and published as peer-reviewed papers or preprints as of May 12, 2020 were retrieved from PubMed, preprint servers, and communications with experts. Studies on blood donors were included, but studies on healthcare workers were excluded. The studies were assessed for design features and seroprevalence estimates. Infection fatality rate was estimated from each study dividing the number of COVID-19 deaths at a relevant time point by the number of estimated people infected in each relevant region. Correction was also attempted accounting for the types of antibodies assessed. Results Twelve studies were identified with usable data to enter into calculations. Seroprevalence estimates ranged from 0.113% to 25.9% and adjusted seroprevalence estimates ranged from 0.309% to 33%. Infection fatality rates ranged from 0.03% to 0.50% and corrected values ranged from 0.02% to 0.40%. Conclusions The infection fatality rate of COVID-19 can vary substantially across different locations and this may reflect differences in population age structure and case-mix of infected and deceased patients as well as multiple other factors. Estimates of infection fatality rates inferred from seroprevalence studies tend to be much lower than original speculations made in the early days of the pandemic.

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Paper in collection COVID-19 SARS-CoV-2 preprints from medRxiv and bioRxiv

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