Delay in death reporting affects timely monitoring and modeling of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This study describes the COVID-19 death reporting delay in the city of São Luís, Maranhão State, Brazil, and shows its impact on timely monitoring and modeling of the COVID-19 pandemic, while seeking to ascertain how nowcasting can improve death reporting delay. We analyzed COVID-19 death data reported daily in the Epidemiological Bulletin of the State Health Secretariat of Maranhão and calculated the reporting delay from March 23 to August 29, 2020. A semi-mechanistic Bayesian hierarchical model was fitted to…