engleski

Do countries diminish the number of new COVID- 19 cases? A test using Benford’s law and uniform distribution

COVID-19 represents not only public health emergency but affects all aspects of our lives. Countries all over the world are fighting hard against this pandemic. However, there are doubts regarding the reported number of newly infected people. In this paper Benford's law and uniform distribution are used for detection of false number of reported COVID-19 cases. The analysis when all countries have been observed together showed that there is a potential doubt that countries falsify their data of new cases of infection intentionally. On the other side, the analysis on an individual country level has shown that most countries do not diminish their numbers of new COVID-19 cases deliberately. However, further investigation should be made in this field in order to validate the results of this research. The limitation of the methodology used in this paper is related to the reported number of cases of infection that is actually lower than the real number of infected people. The results obtained from this paper can be important for economic and health policy makers in order to guide COVID-19 surveillance and implement public health policy measures.

COVID-19 ; Benford’s law ; uniform distribution ; detection of false number of infection cases

nije evidentirano