Statistical biases and decision-making
at the healthcare system level
Statistical biases have affected medical decision-making during the
COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, some issues need to be considered when
reporting statistics of COVID-19 at the country level and the state
level. First, given the unequal distribution of population within the
country, the use of aggregated data from country-level to calculate the
state or national statistics might result in the biased overall
estimated COVID-19 growth rate due to the higher spread rate and number
of death in hotspot regions 6. Second, the population
of each country must be considered when the number of infected patients
is reported. As the population of a country increases, the number of
infected cases is expected to potentially increase, and this is an issue
needed to be considered in determining the severity of countries’ states7. Third, the number of performed COVID-19 tests is a
crucial factor to be considered when comparing the condition of
countries in terms of the number of confirmed cases. As the number of
performed cases in a country increases, the number of diagnosed
asymptomatic cases increases, and this results in a high disease rate
report for that country. Indeed, this country is prosperous in detecting
a large percentage of both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases and
isolates them to cease the infection spread, while the reported rate can
add biases that the mentioned country has failed in disease control.