Abstract
The severe acute respiratory syndrome COVID-19 has been in the center of the ongoing global health crisis in 2020. The high prevalence of mild cases facilitates sub-notification outside hospital environments and the number of those who are or have been infected remains largely unknown, leading to poor estimates of the crude mortality rate of the disease. Here we use a simple model to describe the number of accumulated deaths caused by COVID-19. The close connection between the proposed model and an approximate solution of the SIR model provides estimates of epidemiological parameters. We find values for the crude mortality between 10-4 and 10-3 which are lower than estimated numbers obtained from laboratory-confirmed patients. We also calculate quantities of practical interest such as the basic reproduction number and subsequent increment after relaxation of lockdown and other control measures.