Analysis of Reproduction Number R0 of COVID-19 Using Current Health Expenditure as Gross Domestic Product Percentage (CHE/GDP) across Countries

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Abstract

(1) Background: Impact and severity of coronavirus pandemic on health infrastructure vary across countries. We examine the role percentage health expenditure plays in various countries in terms of their preparedness and see how countries improved their public health policy in the first and second wave of the coronavirus pandemic; (2) Methods: We considered the infectious period during the first and second wave of 195 countries with their current health expenditure as gross domestic product percentage (CHE/GDP). An exponential model was used to calculate the slope of the regression line while the ARIMA model was used to calculate the initial autocorrelation slope and also to forecast new cases for both waves. The relationship between epidemiologic and CHE/GDP data was used for processing ordinary least square multivariate modeling and classifying countries into different groups using PC analysis, K-means and hierarchical clustering; (3) Results: Results show that some countries with high CHE/GDP improved their public health strategy against virus during the second wave of the pandemic; (4) Conclusions: Results revealed that countries who spend more on health infrastructure improved in the tackling of the pandemic in the second wave as they were worst hit in the first wave. This research will help countries to decide on how to increase their CHE/GDP in order to properly tackle other pandemic waves of the present COVID-19 outbreak and future diseases that may occur. We are also opening up a debate on the crucial role socio-economic determinants play during the exponential phase of the pandemic modelling.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.27.21262737: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    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.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.


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