Worldwide differences in COVID19-related mortality

• Autor(a) principal: Hallal, Pedro
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: preprint
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: SciELO Preprints
• Texto Completo: https://preprints.scielo.org/index.php/scielo/preprint/view/167
• topic: COVID-19; mortalidade; epidemiologia; COVID-19; mortality; epidemiology

Background: COVID-19 was declared pandemic on March 11. By April 18, over 150,000 people had died around the world. Here we compare mortality statistics due to COVID-19 worldwide, by adjusting for the size of the population and the stage of the pandemic. Methods: Data from the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, and Our World in Data websites were used. Analyses are based on number of deaths per one million inhabitants. In order to account for the stage of the pandemic, the baseline date was defined as the day in which the 10th death was reported. The analyses included 78 countries and territories which reported 10 or more deaths by April 9. Results: Mortality statistics varied remarkably worldwide. On day 10, India had 0.06 deaths per million, Belgium had 30.46 and San Marino 618.78. On day 20, India had 0.27 deaths per million, China had 0.71 and Spain 139.62. On day 30, four Asian countries had the lowest mortality figures, whereas eight European countries had the highest ones. In Italy and Spain, mortality on day 40 was greater than 250 per million, whereas in China and South Korea, mortality was below 4 per million.  Mortality on day 10 was moderately correlated with life expectancy (rho 0.53; P<0.001), but not with population density (rho 0.12; P=0.31). Conclusions: Asian countries presented much lower mortality figures as compared to European ones. Life expectancy was found to be correlated with mortality.