Is the spread of COVID-19 across countries influenced by environmental, economic and social factors?

  1. Mohammad Alamgir Hossain

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Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2 virus, emerged from Wuhan, China is spreading all over the world in an unprecedented manner, causing millions of infections and thousands of deaths. However, the spread of the disease across countries and regions are not even. Why some countries and regions are more affected than some other countries and regions? We employ simple statistical methods to investigate any linkage between the severity of the disease and the environmental, economic and social factors of countries. The estimation results indicate that the number of confirmed cases of Coronavirus infection is higher in countries with lower yearly average temperatures, higher economic openness and stronger political democracy. However, findings of this analysis should be interpreted carefully keeping in mind the fact that statistical relations do not necessarily imply causation. Only clinical experiments with medical expertise can confirm how the virus behaves in the environment.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.04.08.20058164: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.04.08.20058164 on medRxiv