Risk factors for increased COVID-19 case-fatality in the United States: A county-level analysis during the first wave

Millar, Jess A.; Dao, Hanh Dung; Stefopulos, Marianne; Estevam, Camila Genaro; Fagan-Garcia, Katharine; Taft, Diana H.; Park, Chris; Alruwaily, Amaal; Desai, Angel N.; Majumder, Maimuna S.

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0258308

Cited by 8 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study showing on a global scale that in countries with more residents attending religious services, there are more coronavirus cases and more deaths caused by coronavirus. These results are in line with the outcomes of studies conducted locally (Millar et al, 2021 ; Vermeer & Kregting, 2020 ) and observations of numerous COVID-19 cases linked to places of worship and religious gatherings (Canete, 2021 ; Tan et al, 2021 ; Yezli & Khan, 2021 ). It needs to be stressed that at the first time point, internal religiosity was unrelated to the severity of the pandemic, which indicates that it is not religious belief per se contributing to the severity, but attendance at religious practices, which typically involves physical proximity to others.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Religiosity and the Spread of COVID-19: A Multinational Comparison

Linke

Jankowski

2022

J Relig Health

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This article considers the relationships between population religiosity and the coronavirus pandemic situation across different countries. Country-level analyses were based on data from the World Values Survey, Worldometer, and International Monetary Fund covering information about internal (beliefs) and external (practices) religiosity, religious fundamentalism, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the economic situation at two time points in 47 countries. Results showed that declared attendance at religious services is related to more COVID-19 infections and deaths, as well as when controlling for gross domestic product per capita and the number of coronavirus tests per 1 million population. This effect remained in the longitudinal perspective (of six months) and extended from external religiosity only, to both internal and external religiosity indices. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10943-022-01521-9.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Religiosity and the Spread of COVID-19: A Multinational Comparison

Linke

Jankowski

2022

J Relig Health

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“…Indeed, severe cases are more prone to transmit the COVID-19 infection because of their higher viral load, and they are also more prone to die of the infection (37). The case fatality ratio of COVID-19 in SSA was approximately 3.42%, which is much lower compared than the case fatality ratio reported on other continents (38)(39)(40).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

The spread and burden of the COVID-19 pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa: comparison between predictions and actual data and lessons learned

Fokoua-Maxime

Bellouche

Tchigui-Ariolle

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Introduction Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) was predicted to be severely affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, but the actual data seem to have contradicted these forecasts. This study attempted to verify this observation by comparing predictions against actual data on the spread and burden of the COVID-19 pandemic in SSA. Methods Focused on the period from March 1 st to September 30 th , 2020, we compared (1) the predicted interval dates when each SSA country would report 1 000 and 10 000 COVID-19 cases, to the actual dates when these numbers were attained, as well as (2) the daily number of predicted versus actual COVID-19 cases. Further, we calculated the case fatality ratio of the COVID-19 infection in SSA, and the correlation coefficient between the weekly average number of confirmed COVID-19 cases reported by each country and the weekly average stringency index of its anti-COVID-19 policy measures. Results 84.61% (33) and 100% (39) of the 39 SSA countries for which predictions were made did not reach a total of 1 000 and 10 000 confirmed COVID-19 cases at the predicted interval dates. The daily number of confirmed COVID-19 cases was lower than the one projected for all SSA countries. The case fatality ratio of the COVID-19 infection in SSA was 3.42%. Among the 44 SSA countries for which the correlation could be estimated, it was negative for 17 (38.6%) of them. Conclusions The natural characteristics of SSA and the public health measures implemented might partly explain that the actual data were lower than the predictions on the COVID-19 pandemic in SSA, but the low case ascertainment and the numerous asymptomatic cases did significantly influence this observation.

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“…It was known early on in the pandemic that close-quarters such as cruise ships were epicenters of COVID-19 spread (Sloane 2020). Similarly, increasing the county-wide percentage of people living in group quarters, such as nursing homes and prisons, has also been shown to increase risk (Karmakar, Lantz, and Tipirneni 2021; Millar et al 2021). Our results show that this continued to be important through the pre-Delta time period of the pandemic.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Standardizing the response variables in this method allows for use of standard multiple regression along with elastic net regression, as the case rates approximately follow a normal distribution (Figure A1). Previous analyses by Karmakar, Lantz, and Tipirneni and Millar et al, use similarly scaled COVID-19 cases/deaths (with Karmakar, Lantz, and Tipirneni (2021) using cases per 100,000 and Millar et al (2021) using adjusted case-fatality rate). However, both of these analyses opt for using negative binomial regression via generalized linear models as the response variable is count data at its core.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Application of Elastic Net Regression for Modeling COVID-19 Sociodemographic Risk Factors

Moxley

Johnson-Leung

Seamon

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Objectives: COVID-19 has been at the forefront of global concern since its emergence in December of 2019. Determining the social factors that drive case incidence is paramount to mitigating disease spread. We gathered data from the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) along with Democratic voting percentage to attempt to understand which county-level sociodemographic metrics had a significant correlation with case rate for COVID-19. Methods: We used elastic net regression due to issues with variable collinearity and model overfitting. Our modelling framework included using the ten Health and Human Services regions as submodels for the two time periods 22 March 2020 to 15 June 2021 (prior to the Delta time period) and 15 June 2021 to 1 November 2021 (the Delta time period). Results: Statistically, elastic net improved prediction when compared to multiple regression, as almost every HHS model consistently had a lower root mean square error (RMSE) and satisfactory R2 coefficients. These analyses show that the percentage of minorities, disabled individuals, individuals living in group quarters, and individuals who voted Democratic correlated significantly with COVID-19 attack rate as determined by Variable Importance Plots (VIPs). Conclusions: The percentage of minorities per county correlated positively with cases in the earlier time period and negatively in the later time period, which complements previous research. In contrast, higher percentages of disabled individuals per county correlated negatively in the earlier time period. Counties with an above average percentage of group quarters experienced a high attack rate early which then diminished in significance after the primary vaccine rollout. Higher Democratic voting consistently correlated negatively with cases, coinciding with previous findings regarding a partisan divide in COVID-19 cases at the county level. Our findings can assist policymakers in distributing resources to more vulnerable counties in future pandemics based on SVI.

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Risk factors for increased COVID-19 case-fatality in the United States: A county-level analysis during the first wave

Cited by 8 publications

References 46 publications

Religiosity and the Spread of COVID-19: A Multinational Comparison

Religiosity and the Spread of COVID-19: A Multinational Comparison

The spread and burden of the COVID-19 pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa: comparison between predictions and actual data and lessons learned

Application of Elastic Net Regression for Modeling COVID-19 Sociodemographic Risk Factors

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