Title: Variation in COVID-19 mortality rates and its socio-economic determinants across countries: an empirical exploration

Authors: Debabrata Mukhopadhyay

Addresses: Department of Economics, West Bengal State University, West Bengal, Kolkata 700126, India

Abstract: COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China in December 2019 and spreading human suffering worldwide has been one of the major health crises in the history of mankind in terms of its spread and severity. The pandemic with unprecedented economic shock has started to have a devastating impact - far larger than any other post-war pandemics. Now, this study intends to find out the social and economic determinants of case fatality rate (defined as the proportion of people who died from COVID-19 among all individuals diagnosed of COVID-19 positive) covering 136 countries in the world using the data from the World Health Organization and the World Bank as on 20 July 2020. The results based on a control chart and multivariable model show wide variations in case fatality rates across countries and a substantial portion of this variation can be explained by differences in the health care system, socioeconomic deprivation, demography and geography.

Keywords: case fatality rate; COVID-19 pandemic; control chart; multivariable model; healthcare system; specific cause variation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBHR.2022.121999

International Journal of Behavioural and Healthcare Research, 2022 Vol.8 No.1/2, pp.27 - 39

Received: 27 Jan 2021
Accepted: 06 Jan 2022
Published online: 07 Apr 2022 *

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