AUTHOR=Calabuig J. M. , García-Raffi L. M. , García-Valiente A. , Sánchez-Pérez E. A. 

TITLE=Kaplan-Meier Type Survival Curves for COVID-19: A Health Data Based Decision-Making Tool

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health

VOLUME=Volume 9 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.646863

DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2021.646863

ISSN=2296-2565

ABSTRACT=Countries are recording health information on the global spread of COVID-19 using different methods, sometimes changing the rules after a few days. They are all  publishing the number of new individuals infected, recovered and dead, along with some supplementary data. These figures are often recorded in a non-uniform manner and do not match the standard definitions of  these variables. However, using data from the first wave of the epidemic---february-june---, in this paper we show that the Kaplan-Meier curves calculated with them could provide useful information about the dynamics of the disease in different countries.  We present a robust and simple model to show certain characteristics of the evolution of the dynamic process, showing that the differences of evolution among the countries is reflected in the corresponding Kaplan-Meier-type curves. We compare the curves obtained for the most affected countries so far, with the corresponding interpretation of the properties that distinguish them.