The association between COVID-19 incidence and mortality with Socioeconomic Development - A Global Ecological Study

Background: There is some evidence about the role of human development in the incidenceand mortality of some diseases. The aim of this study was to investigate the relation betweenCOVID-19 incidence and mortality with development indexes in different regions of the world.Material and Methods: This ecological study was conducted on data from January 11 toAugust 23, 2020. The development indexes included were Human development index (HDI),Inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI), the Gini Coefficient, Gender Development Index (GDI),Gender Inequality Index (GII) and their components. The development indexes was obtainedfrom the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). COVID-19 cases and mortality dataof the countries involved in the pandemic were obtained from the European Centre for DiseasePrevention and Control (ECDC). Data was analyzed by Spearman correlation coefficients andnegative binomial regression through SPSS26.Results: The highest and lowest incidence and mortality rates were in the AMRO andWPRO regions, respectively. The development indexes had no a significant linearcorrelation with COVID-19 incidence and mortality except in WPRO, where there wasdirect significant correlation between life expectancy at birth and inequality adjusted lifeexpectancy with COVID-19 incidence and mortality (P<0.05).Conclusions: Our findings suggests limited evidence that countries level of developmentmay directly influence morbidity and mortality from COVID-19. However, with regardto the ecological nature of this study, the reason for this association is difficult todetermine.

کلیدواژه ها:

COVID-19 ، Socioeconomic Development ، HDI ، IHDI ، GII ، GDI ، Gini Index