Comparison Between Two Estimators of COVID-19 Case Fatality Rate over Time: Missouri as a Case Study

Coronavirus is part of a family of different viruses. A new member of this family was identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019. This novel coronavirus is called Coronavirus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19) which has spread around the world within a few months. The case fatality rate (CFR) of this disease was estimated by constructing the slope of the simple linear regression and compared with the epidemiological measure of the case fatality rate. The data analysis showed that the regression slope estimates of Missouri for the last day was 1.45% (95% CI: 1.43% – 1.46%) comparing with 1.58% for the basic formula. Over time, the results showed that the difference between the two estimators was very small, it was below 1%, but the regression slope estimate was more robust than the epidemiological measure of the case fatality rate, especially in the early stages.

Keywords: COVID-19; Case fatality rate; Simple linear regression