Confirmed Case Outcome Fatality
Compare crude and resolved-outcome CFR within one confirmed-case cohort; neither corrects ascertainment or outcome lag.
Description
Compare crude and resolved-case fatality percentages from aligned confirmed-case outcome counts.
A case-fatality proportion describes deaths among identified cases, while an infection-fatality proportion uses all infections as its denominator. Case identification and reporting can therefore affect the apparent fatality proportion.1
This calculator displays two denominators side by side: all confirmed cases for the crude percentage, and deaths plus recovered cases for the resolved-case percentage. Confirmed cases with neither supplied outcome are counted as unresolved.
The resolved percentage describes the completed outcomes in your snapshot. It is not automatically a correction for outcome delay: death and recovery can be recorded at different times, and resolved cases can differ from those still followed.
When to use Confirmed Case Outcome Fatality
Use it to reconcile outcome counts from the same case cohort and reporting cutoff, or to show how excluding unresolved cases changes a descriptive percentage.
How to use Confirmed Case Outcome Fatality and interpret its calculation
- Enter positive confirmedCases and nonnegative deaths and recoveredCases as integer counts from the same cohort.
- Ensure deaths plus recoveries does not exceed confirmed cases and at least one outcome is resolved.
- Run the tool and compare both percentages with unresolvedCases; state the reporting date and denominator when presenting results.
crude % = 100 × deaths / confirmed; resolved % = 100 × deaths / (deaths + recovered); unresolved = confirmed − deaths − recovered The two percentages use the same death count and different denominators.
Validation treats deaths and recoveries as mutually exclusive outcomes. With no resolved outcomes, the entire calculation is rejected because the resolved denominator would be zero.
{
"input": {
"confirmedCases": 100,
"deaths": 10,
"recoveredCases": 70
},
"output": {
"crudeCaseFatalityPercent": 10,
"resolvedCaseFatalityPercent": 12.5,
"unresolvedCases": 20
}
}| Situation | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| All cases resolved | The two percentages coincide. |
| No deaths but at least one recovery | Both percentages are zero. |
| Neither deaths nor recoveries recorded | The tool rejects the zero resolved denominator. |
Limitations and assumptions
Use nonnegative safe-integer counts and a positive confirmed-case total. Count reconciliation cannot verify that records share a cohort, case definition, follow-up period, or mutually exclusive outcomes.
No confidence interval, age standardization, outcome-delay adjustment, censoring model, under-ascertainment correction, or causal attribution is performed. The result is not an individual prognosis.
Alternative or Complementary methods
For an infection-based denominator, use a separately justified estimate of infections, such as an appropriately adjusted serology estimate. An attack-rate calculation measures transmission among contacts rather than severity among cases.
References
-
Estimating mortality from COVID-19 — World Health Organization
Similar or alternative tools
- Serology Adjusted IFR
Calculate an infection-fatality estimate from supplied serological assumptions and counts.
- Household Secondary Attack
Summarize secondary cases among exposed household contacts.