Estimation of the Hidden Population with COVID-19 Disease

Soltanian, Ali Reza; Bashirian, Saeid; Basti, Shahin Akhondzadeh; Karami, Manoochehr; Ostovar, Afshin; Khazaei, Salman

The population with emerging diseases such as COVID-19, which is used to calculate the basic reproduction number of epidemic outbreak (R(0)) cannot be simply observed. In this article, we have proposed a method for estimating the hidden population of people with COVID-19 disease. Knowing the number of people with COVID-19 disease is very important for health policy. The provision of medical equipment (e.g., masks, alcohol, ventilators, medication, etc.), the reopening of schools and universities, the start of tourism and public gatherings, the provision of medical staff and preventive planning depend on the number of patients with the disease. Therefore, it is very important to estimate the number of patients.