With the current outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), countries have been on rising preparedness to detect and isolate any imported and locally transmitted cases of the disease. It is observed that mode of transmission of the disease varies from one country to the other. Recent studies have shown that COVID-19 cases are not influenced by race and weather conditions. In this study, effect of modes of transmission of COVID-19 is considered with respect to prevalence and mortality counts in World Health Organisation (WHO) regions. Also, a negative binomial model is formulated for new death cases in all WHO regions as a function of confirmed cases, confirmed new cases, total deaths and modes of transmission, with the goal of identifying a model that predicts the total new death cases the best. Results from this study show that there is strong linear relationship among the COVID-19 confirmed cases, total new deaths and mode of transmission in all WHO regions. Findings highlight the significant roles of modes of transmission on total new death cases over WHO regions. Mode of transmission based on community transmission and clusters of cases significantly affects the number of new deaths in WHO regions. Vuong test shows that the formulated negative binomial model fits the data better than the null model.
Keywords: COVID-19; Mode of transmission; Mortality; Predictive model; WHO regions.
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