Multilevel Regression and Poststratification Interface: An Application to Track Community-level COVID-19 Viral Transmission

We have developed an open-source, user-friendly MRP interface for public implementation of the statistical workflow. In the absence of comprehensive or random testing throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have developed a proxy method for synthetic random sampling to estimate community-level viral incidence, based on viral RNA testing of asymptomatic patients who present for elective procedures within a hospital system. The approach collects routine testing data on SARS-CoV-2 exposure among outpatients and performs statistical adjustments of sample representation using multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP), a procedure that adjusts for nonrepresentativeness of the sample and yields stable small group estimates. We illustrate the MRP interface with an application to track community-level COVID-19 viral transmission in the state of Michigan.