The underlying factors of the COVID‐19 spatially uneven spread. Initial evidence from regions in nine EU countries

Abstract

The novel coronavirus COVID-19 was brought to the global spotlight in early 2020 and has already had significant impacts on daily life, while the effects could last for a long period. However, these impacts appear to have been regionally differentiated, since similar to previous pandemics, geography plays an important role in viruses' diffusion. This paper enriches our knowledge about the initial territorial impact of the pandemic, from January to May 2020, studying the spread of COVID-19 across 119 regional economies in nine EU countries and explaining its underlying factors. Air quality, demographics, global interconnectedness, urbanization trends, historic trends in health expenditure as well as the policies implemented to mitigate the pandemic were found to have influenced the regionally uneven mortality rate of COVID-19.

Which are factors determining a low COVID-19 mortality in society? High health expenditure and lower exposure of population to air pollution as critical factors for an effective strategy to cope with future pandemics similar to COVID-19

“…This study reveals that countries with a lower fatality rates have a high health expenditure (% of GDP) of roughly 7.6% and government health expenditure per capita of about $2,300, whereas countries with a higher fatality rates have a health expenditure (% of GDP) of roughly 6% and government health expenditure per capita of about $243 that indicate a weak healthcare sector to cope with pandemics and also other diseases. This main result is con rmed by other scholars, such as Kapitsinis (2020) that argues how health investments over time are a critical health policy to mitigate mortality rate of COVID-19.…”

“…Stribling et al (2020) argue that health policy and involvement of nurse leaders have a main role to mitigate COVID-19 pandemic. Kapitsinis (2020) investigates the diffusion of the novel coronavirus in nine European countries and pinpoints that health investments play a vital role to alleviate mortality rate of COVID-19. Ahmed et al (2020) focus on different demographic, socioeconomic, and lifestyle health factors in countries to explain the variety of COVID-19 effects in society.…”

Forecasting intensive care unit demand during the COVID-19 pandemic: A spatial age-structured microsimulation model

“…However, it is challenging to determine whether mitigation measures have to be maintained or even strengthened in order to prevent ICU demand from exceeding supply, or whether there is leeway to relax the measures. This challenge, which calls for an extension of conventional epidemiological models, arises for two main reasons: First, conventional epidemiological models often tend not to fully capture the dynamic spread of the virus across space and time (Kapitsinis 2020; Mense & Michelsen 2020; Thomas et al 2020). However, capturing this dynamic is crucial given the high spatial and temporal variation of the COVID-19 pandemic that often results in sub-national infection hot spots.…”

Geospatial and Semantic Mapping Platform for Massive COVID-19 Scientific Publication Search

“…This virus can infect people of all ages and cause mild to severe illness known as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The COVID-19 pandemic has been causing unprecedented consequences in human society (Kapitsinis 2020 ; Zhang et al 2020 ). It has infected more than 50 million people and caused the deaths of over 1.2 million people as of November 9, 2020.…”