Ritwik Bhaduri

2021 · BMC Research Notes

Estimating the wave 1 and wave 2 infection fatality rates from SARS-CoV-2 in India

Soumik Purkayastha, Ritoban Kundu, Ritwik Bhaduri, Daniel Barker, Michael Kleinsasser, Debashree Ray, et al.

medRxiv preprint Journal article

Abstract

There has been much discussion and debate around the underreporting of COVID-19 infections and deaths in India. We first estimate the underreporting factor for infections from publicly available data released by the Indian Council of Medical Research on reported number of cases and national seroprevalence surveys. We then use a compartmental epidemiologic model to estimate the undetected number of infections and deaths across two periods: the first wave (April 1, 2020–January 31, 2021) and part of the second wave (February 1–May 15, 2021). Both wave estimates show a large degree of covert infections, with model-based estimated underreporting factor for infections as 11.11 (95% CrI 10.71–11.47) and for deaths as 3.56 (95% CrI 3.48–3.64) for wave 1. For wave 2, underreporting factors escalate to 26.77 (95% CrI 24.26–28.81) for infections and 5.77 (95% CrI 5.34–6.15) for deaths. Combining waves 1 and 2, as of May 15, 2021, estimated total infections stand at 491 million (36% of the population) and deaths at 1.21 million, yielding an estimated combined infection fatality rate of 0.25%.

BibTeX

@article{purkayastha2021estimating,
  title={Estimating the wave 1 and wave 2 infection fatality rates from {SARS-CoV-2} in India},
  author={Soumik Purkayastha and Ritoban Kundu and Ritwik Bhaduri and Daniel Barker and Michael Kleinsasser and Debashree Ray and others},
  journal={BMC Research Notes},
  year={2021},
  doi={10.1186/s13104-021-05652-2},
  abstract={We estimate the underreporting factor for COVID-19 infections and deaths in India using a compartmental epidemiologic model across two waves: wave 1 (April 1, 2020-January 31, 2021) and part of wave 2 (February 1-May 15, 2021). Model-based estimated underreporting factor for infections is 11.11 (95% CrI 10.71-11.47) for wave 1 and 26.77 (95% CrI 24.26-28.81) for wave 2. Combining waves 1 and 2, estimated total infections stand at 491 million (36% of the population) with a combined IFR of 0.25%.}
}