Is COVID-19 mortality associated with test number?

Iwata, Kentaro; Miyakoshi, Chisato · J Family Med Prim Care · 2022

cross_sectional · Level IV

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Abstract

With the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), there is an argument on whether we should increase the number of testing for the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) to mitigate the epidemic in a given country. Therefore, we investigated the correlation between testing number and mortality to evaluate the hypothesis. Data on an open-access database of COVID-19 was retrieved. Member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), BRICs nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), and Taiwan were included in the analysis, but 2 countries were removed as outliers. There was a weak, positive correlation between mortality and testing (r = 0.34, <i>P =</i> 0.03). On regression analysis, there was a positive slope but the coefficient was very small (0.00064). We found a very small positive correlation between testing number and mortality for COVID-19.