Globalized low-income countries may experience higher COVID-19 mortality rates

Abstract

Understanding the factors underpinning COVID-19 infection and mortality rates is essential in order to implement actions that help mitigate the current pandemic. Here we evaluate how a suit of 15 climatic and socio-economic variables influence COVID-19 exponential growth-phase infection and mortality rates across 36 countries. We found that imports of goods and services, international tourism and the number of published scientific papers are good predictors of COVID-19 infection rates, indicating that more globalized countries may have experienced multiple and recurrent introductions of the virus. However, high-income countries showed lower mortality rates, suggesting that the consequences of the current pandemic will be worse for globalized low-income countries. International aid agencies could use this information to help mitigate the consequences of the current pandemic in the most vulnerable countries.

Containment measures limit environmental effects on COVID-19 early outbreak dynamics

“…The role of environmental drivers on COVID-19 spatial patterns and growth rate is controversial (Araújo et al, 2020; Carlson et al, 2020a; Carlson et al, 2020b; National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine, 2020). Some authors suggested that this disease had a reduced impact and spread in warm climates, and in areas with low pollution and experiencing intense UV radiation (Merow and Urban, 2020; Rahman et al, 2020; Runkle et al, 2020; Sajadi et al, 2020; Sobral et al, 2020; Wu et al, 2020b; Wu et al, 2020c; Zhang et al, 2020), while others reported that socio-economic factors and airport connections have a much stronger impact than environmental drivers (Coelho et al, 2020; Jaffe et al, 2020).…”

“…The huge variation of COVID-19 growth rates among regions with similar climate and air quality levels highlights that diverse and complex social and demographic factors, as well as stochasticity, may strongly contribute to the severity of local outbreaks, irrespective of environmental effects. The potential socio-economic drivers of COVID-19 outbreak are many (Coelho et al, 2020; Jaffe et al, 2020). Even if we did not manage to model the spatial spread of the disease across regions, we integrated several variables reflecting potential socio-economic drivers.…”

“…Tamerius et al, 2013; Islam et al, 2020a; Kampf et al, 2020; Runkle et al, 2020; Sajadi et al, 2020; Sobral et al, 2020; Wu et al, 2020c), and air pollution (e.g. Bianconi et al, 2020; Rahman et al, 2020; Wu et al, 2020b; Yao et al, 2020; Zhang et al, 2020), while accounting for major socio-economic features of the affected regions (Coelho et al, 2020; Jaffe et al, 2020; Shammi et al, 2020). However, results of these studies were sometimes controversial, casting doubts on the possibility of correctly identifying environmental signals on COVID-19 spread dynamics (Carlson et al, 2020a; Carlson et al, 2020b).…”

Global expansion of COVID-19 pandemic is driven by population size and airport connections

“…Here, we observe the same pattern at country level. Faster spread in regions with larger populations have been explained by the interaction of frequent trades and people exchanges, and the difficulty to control early outbreaks within larger populations (Jaffe, Vera & Jaffe, 2020;Harbert, Cunningham & Tessler, 2020;Stier, Berman & Bettencourt, 2020). Because of the multiple infection routes and faster spread in larger populations, recent discussions emphasize the need to implement more aggressive social distancing policies in regions with larger populations (Stier, Berman & Bettencourt, 2020).…”

Peer Review #1 of "Global expansion of COVID-19 pandemic is driven by population size and airport connections (v0.1)"

“…Manuscript to be reviewed the same pattern at country level. Faster spread in regions with larger populations have been explained by the interaction of frequent trades and people exchanges, and the difficulty to control early outbreaks within larger populations (Jaffe et al 2020, Harbert et al 2020, Stier et al 2020).…”