Estimating Active Cases of COVID-19

Abstract

Having accurate and timely data on confirmed active COVID-19 cases is challenging, since it depends on testing capacity and the availability of an appropriate infrastructure to perform tests and aggregate their results. In this paper, we propose methods to estimate the number of active cases of COVID-19 from the official data (of confirmed cases and fatalities) and from survey data. We show that the latter is a viable option in countries with reduced testing capacity or suboptimal infrastructures.