Estimation of Case Fatality Rate during an Epidemic: an Example from COVID-19 Pandemic

The case fatality rate (CFR) is an important index in epidemics and policymakers need to be aware of this statistic for making sound decisions. However, there are some uncertainties in the calculation of the fatality rate and the true case fatality rate can be calculated after an epidemic subsides, we calculated the fatality rate for 20 countries which had the highest number of confirmed cases with three scenarios. In this study, we provided detailed information to discuss the studies that calculate the case fatality rate during the COVID-19 pandemic and highlight the estimation bias in these studies