Pearson’s correlation coefficient-assisted estimation of the case-fatality rate of Covid-19 for 16 countries

Increased cases of corona virus infections have been reported in many countries of the world. This work considers the relationship between the number of deaths from COVID-19 and the numbers of infection cases. Using the Pearson’s correlation coefficient, we found a very strong positive relationship between the numbers of deaths and detected cases of COVID-19. The value of r we got as at two different dates were 0.9217 and 0.9188. We further got an estimate of the case-fatality rate of COVID-19 by ascertaining the percentage of detected cases that die, giving us a case-fatality rate of 0.0248, which can be used to forecast deaths resulting from COVID-19.