https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-01448-2
Regular Article
A study on the possible merits of using symptomatic cases to trace the development of the COVID-19 pandemic
1
Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy
2
INFN Sezione di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
3
Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy
4
INFN Sezione di Napoli, Naples, Italy
5
INFN Sezione di Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy
6
INFN Sezione di Padova, Padua, Italy
7
Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Received:
5
January
2021
Accepted:
16
April
2021
Published online:
3
May
2021
In a recent work, we introduced a novel method to compute the effective reproduction number 
and we applied it to describe the development of the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. The study is based on the number of daily positive swabs as reported by the Italian Dipartimento di Protezione Civile. Recently, the Italian Istituto Superiore di Sanità made available the data relative of the symptomatic cases, where the reporting date is the date of beginning of symptoms instead of the date of the reporting of the positive swab. In this paper, we will discuss merits and drawbacks of this data, quantitatively comparing the quality of the pandemic indicators computed with the two samples.
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2021
