Tracking deaths can provide an indicator of latent COVID19 cases

BackgroundWith countries across the world facing repeated epidemic waves, it becomes critical to monitor, mitigate and prevent subsequent waves. Common indicators like active case numbers can flatter to deceive in the presence of systemic inefficiencies like insufficient testing or contact tracing. Test positivity rates are sensitive to testing strategies and cannot estimate the extent of undetected cases. Reproductive numbers estimated from logarithms of new incidences are inaccurate in dynamic scenarios and not sensitive enough to capture changes in efficiencies. Systemic fatigue results in lower testing, inefficient tracing and quarantining thereby precipitating the onset of the epidemic wave. MethodsWe propose a novel indicator for detecting the slippage of test-trace efficiency based on the numbers of deaths/hospitalizations resulting from known and hitherto unknown infections. This can also be used to forecast an epidemic wave that is advanced or exacerbated due to drop in efficiency. ResultsUsing a modified SEIRD epidemic simulator we show that (i) Ratio of deaths/hospitalizations from an undetected infection to total deaths converges to a measure of systemic test-trace inefficiency. (ii) This index forecasts the slippage in efficiency earlier than other known metrics. (iii) Mitigation triggered by this index helps reduce peak active caseload and eventual deaths. ConclusionsDeaths/hospitalizations accurately track the systemic inefficiencies and detect latent cases. Based on these results we make a strong case that administrations use this metric in the ensemble of indicators. Further hospitals may need to be mandated to distinctly register deaths/hospitalizations due to previously undetected infections. Key MessagesO_LIDeaths or Hospitalizations are unmissable events in an epidemic and this paper proposes a metric Dratio based on these numbers to monitor the inefficiencies in test-track-trace performance. C_LIO_LIThe ratio of deaths(or hospitalizations) resulting from undetected infections to total deaths (or hospitalizations) detect the onset of laxity in regulations earlier than other conventional metrics like daily increase in active cases, daily deaths or even reproductive number estimates. C_LIO_LIMitigation by tracking the Dratio reduces or truncates the epidemic wave intensity or delays it sufficiently. C_LI