The Skellam Distribution revisited -Estimating the unobserved incoming and outgoing ICU COVID-19 patients on a regional level in Germany

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Rave, Martje, Kauermann, Göran
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Rave, Martje
Kauermann, Göran
author_facet Rave, Martje
Kauermann, Göran
contents With the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we became aware of the need for comprehensive data collection and its provision to scientists and experts for proper data analyses. In Germany, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has tried to keep up with this demand for data on COVID-19, but there were (and still are) relevant data missing that are needed to understand the whole picture of the pandemic. In this paper, we take a closer look at the severity of the course of COVID-19 in Germany, for which ideal information would be the number of incoming patients to ICU units. This information was (and still is) not available. Instead, the current occupancy of ICU units on the district level was reported daily. We demonstrate how this information can be used to predict the number of incoming as well as released COVID-19 patients using a stochastic version of the Expectation Maximisation algorithm (SEM). This in turn, allows for estimating the influence of district-specific and age-specific infection rates as well as further covariates, including spatial effects, on the number of incoming patients. The paper demonstrates that even if relevant data are not recorded or provided officially, statistical modelling allows for reconstructing them. This also includes the quantification of uncertainty which naturally results from the application of the SEM algorithm.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2305_15301
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Skellam Distribution revisited -Estimating the unobserved incoming and outgoing ICU COVID-19 patients on a regional level in Germany
Rave, Martje
Kauermann, Göran
Applications
With the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we became aware of the need for comprehensive data collection and its provision to scientists and experts for proper data analyses. In Germany, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has tried to keep up with this demand for data on COVID-19, but there were (and still are) relevant data missing that are needed to understand the whole picture of the pandemic. In this paper, we take a closer look at the severity of the course of COVID-19 in Germany, for which ideal information would be the number of incoming patients to ICU units. This information was (and still is) not available. Instead, the current occupancy of ICU units on the district level was reported daily. We demonstrate how this information can be used to predict the number of incoming as well as released COVID-19 patients using a stochastic version of the Expectation Maximisation algorithm (SEM). This in turn, allows for estimating the influence of district-specific and age-specific infection rates as well as further covariates, including spatial effects, on the number of incoming patients. The paper demonstrates that even if relevant data are not recorded or provided officially, statistical modelling allows for reconstructing them. This also includes the quantification of uncertainty which naturally results from the application of the SEM algorithm.
title The Skellam Distribution revisited -Estimating the unobserved incoming and outgoing ICU COVID-19 patients on a regional level in Germany
topic Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.15301