Relationships of total COVID-19 cases and deaths with ten demographic, economic and social indicators
AbstractThe statistical relationships of total COVID-19 Cases and Deaths per million populations in 45 countries, where 85.8% of the world’s population lives with 10 demographic, economic and social indicators were studied. Data for 28 May 2020 were used in the main calculations. The relationship of Deaths per million population and total Cases per million population is very close and reaches correlation coefficient R = 0.926. It is interesting that the close correlations were found of Cases and Deaths per 1 million with a purely economic index like GDP PPP per capita, where R = 0.687 and R = 0.660, respectively. Even more close correlations were found of Cases and Deaths per 1 million with a composite index HDI, where the correlation coefficients reach 0.724 and 0.680, respectively. The main reason for these paradoxical results is the underestimation of pandemic restrictions in the form of masks, social distance and disinfection in most of these countries. Other indicators (excluding Gini index and Population Density) also show statistically significant correlations with Cases and Deaths per 1 million with correlation coefficients from 0.432 to 0.634. The statistical significance of the found correlations determined using Student’s t-test was p <0.0001. Surprisingly, there was no statistically significant correlation between Cases and Deaths with Population Density. To check whether there is a change in the correlations with the development of the pandemic, a statistical analysis was made for four different dates – 9 April, 28 May, 7 August and 30 November 2020. It was found that the correlation coefficients of COVID-19 cases and Deaths with the rest indicators decrease during the pandemic.