Is COVID-19 mortality associated with test number?

Abstract

Introduction: With the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), there is an argument on whether we should increase the number of testing for the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) to mitigate the epidemic in a given country. Therefore, we investigated the correlation between testing number and mortality to evaluate the hypothesis. Methods: Data on an open-access database of COVID-19 was retrieved. Member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), BRICs nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), and Taiwan were included in the analysis, but 2 countries were removed as outliers. Results: There was a weak, positive correlation between mortality and testing (r = 0.34, P = 0.03). On regression analysis, there was a positive slope but the coefficient was very small (0.00064). Conclusions: We found a very small positive correlation between testing number and mortality for COVID-19.