Value of Verbal Autopsy in a Fragile Setting: Reported versus Estimated Community Deaths Associated with COVID-19, Banadir, Somalia.
Tahlil Abdi AfrahLilly M NyagahAsma Swaleh AliMary KaranjaHassan W NorSolomon AberaAli Sh MohamedMohamed Ahmed Yusuf GuledMohamed Mohamud Hassan BidayMajdouline ObtelSk Md Mamunur Rahman MalikPublished in: Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) (2023)
We identified 530 deaths during March-October 2020. We classified 176 (33.2%) as probable COVID-19 deaths. Most deaths (78.5%; 416/530) occurred at home and 144 (34.6%) of these were attributed to COVID-19. The positive predictive value of verbal autopsy was lower for home deaths (22.3%; 95% CI: 15.7-30.1%) than for hospital deaths (32.3%; 95% CI: 16.7-51.4%). The negative predictive value was higher: 97.8% (95% CI: 95.0-99.3%) for home deaths and 98.4% (95% CI: 91.5-100%) for hospital deaths. Conclusions Verbal autopsy has acceptable predictive value to estimate COVID-19 deaths where disease prevalence is high and can provide data on the COVID-19 burden in countries with low testing and weak mortality surveillance where home deaths may be missed.