Research Article Open Access

Estimation of the Case Fatality Ratio of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome based on Patients' Comorbidities with Application to the MERS-CoV Epidemics in the Republic of Korea, 2015

Changhyuck Oh1 and Seonyeong Hwang1
  • 1 Department of Statistics, Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan, Gyeongbuk 38541, Republic of Korea, Korea

Abstract

In an early stage of the course of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) outbreak in Korea in 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of Korea and several studies reported estimated Case Fatality Ratios (CFRs) that were significantly different. Here, we propose an estimation method based on the commonly quoted naive estimator of CFR utilizing the number of in-hospital patients with comorbidities, as well as the numbers of cumulative confirmed and dead patients up to a certain date. We compared the proposed estimator with two naive and an integral method estimator by simulation experiments under the individual based susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered model and analysis of data from the 2015 epidemic of MERS-CoV in Korea. The proposed estimator better simulated and analyzed the Korean MERS data.

American Journal of Applied Sciences
Volume 13 No. 11, 2016, 1205-1213

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3844/ajassp.2016.1205.1213

Submitted On: 26 September 2016 Published On: 14 November 2016

How to Cite: Oh, C. & Hwang, S. (2016). Estimation of the Case Fatality Ratio of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome based on Patients' Comorbidities with Application to the MERS-CoV Epidemics in the Republic of Korea, 2015. American Journal of Applied Sciences, 13(11), 1205-1213. https://doi.org/10.3844/ajassp.2016.1205.1213

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Keywords

  • Estimation
  • Case Fatality Ratio
  • MERSE-CoV
  • Comorbidity