Common factors of COVID-19 cases and deaths among the most affected 50 countries

Abstract

Aims: The Coronavirus (COVID-19) is a global pandemic requiring global responses. The objective of this paper is to identify the common factors of COVID-19 cases and deaths among the 50 most affected countries.

Methods: We performed Ordinary least squares among a wide range of socio-economic, environmental, climatic and health indicators to explain the number of cases and deaths.

Results: The findings are: (i) obesity is the only significant global denominator for the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths; (ii) the percentage of the population over the age of 65 and number of hospital beds per 1000 population inversely correlated to mortality from COVID-19.

Conclusions: Obesity increases vulnerability to COVID-19 infections and mortality. Global awareness of obesity and social investment in health infrastructure are pre-requisite for a pandemic adaptive future. However, the study is limited to cross-sectional data of April 17, 2020.

Keywords: COVID-19; Diabetes; Infectious disease; Obesity; Pandemic.