Abstract
Background Laboratory diagnosis of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection combined with tracing/quarantine for contacts of infected individuals affects the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the community and the levels of related mortality. Moreover, not all cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the population are detected (laboratory diagnosed). Here, we examine the relation between detectability of SARS-CoV-2 infection (i.e. the percent of detected COVID-19 cases among all cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the population) and levels of mortality for COVID-19 for the 85 different regions (federal subjects) of the Russian Federation.
Methods Lower case-fatality rate (CFR, the proportion of deaths among reported COVID-19 cases in the population) corresponds to higher detectability of the SARS-COV-2 infection. We used data from the Russian Federal Service for Surveillance on Consumer Rights Protection and Human Wellbeing (Rospotrebnadzor) on the number of detected COVID-19 cases and the number of deaths from COVID-19 in the 85 different regions of the Russian Federation to examine the correlation between case-fatality rates and rates of mortality for COVID-19 in different regions of the Russian Federation.
Results The correlation between case-fatality rates for cases/deaths reported by Sep. 17, 2020 and rates of mortality for COVID-19 per 100,000 for deaths reported by Sep. 17, 2020 in different regions of the Russian Federation is 0.68 (0.55,0.78). The region with both the highest COVID-19 mortality rate per 100,000 and the highest CFR (lowest detectability of SARS-CoV-2 infection) is the city of St. Petersburg.
Conclusions Detectability of SARS-CoV-2 infection is one of the factors that affects the levels of mortality for COVID-19 in Russia. Regions of the Russian Federation with relatively low detectability of SARS-CoV-2 infection (e.g. those regions for which the case-fatality rate is above the median value of 1.2% for the case-fatality rate in different regions of the Russian Federation on Sep. 17, 2020 [3]) ought to increase testing for SARS-CoV-2 in order to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and diminish the related mortality.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Funding Statement
This work involves no funding.
Author Declarations
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We used publicly available, aggregate data, with no informed consent from the participants sought, and no IRB approval required.
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Footnotes
Text/Figure edited.
Data Availability
Data used in this analysis are publicly available thorugh the following URLs in ref. 3,4: https://yandex.ru/maps/covid19?ll=87.127143%2C49.616265&z=3