Abstract
Background: The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was first reported in China in December 2019 and has become a pandemic that resulted in more than one million deaths and infected over 35 million people worldwide. In this study, a continent-wide analysis of COVID-19 cases from 31st December 2019 to 14th June 2020 was performed along with socio-economic factors associated with mortality rates as well as a predicted future scenario of COVID-19 cases until the end of 2020. Methods: Epidemiological and statistical tools such as linear regression, Pearson’s correlation analysis, and the Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model were used in this study. Results: This study shows that the highest number of cases per million population was recorded in Europe, while the trend of new cases is lowest in Africa. The mortality rates in different continents were as follows: North America 4.57%, Europe 3.74%, South America 3.87%, Africa 3.49%, Oceania and Asia less than 2%. Linear regression analysis showed that hospital beds, GDP, diabetes, and higher average age were the significant risk factors for mortality in different continents. The forecasting analysis since the first case of COVID-19 until 1st January 2021 showed that the worst scenario at the end of 2020 predicts a range from 0 to 300,000 daily new cases and a range from 0 to 16,000 daily new deaths. Conclusion: Epidemiological and clinical features of COVID-19 should be better defined, since they can play an import role in future strategies to control this pandemic.
Highlights
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an ongoing pandemic that resulted in global health, economic, and social crises [1]
The cause of that pneumonia was identified on 7th January 2020 as a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which was renamed as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and the disease was termed as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by the World Health Organization (WHO) [5]
By using epidemiological and statistical tools, we described the current situation of COVID-19 positive cases and deaths in different continents as well as the main risk factors associated with mortality rate and worldwide forecasting analysis that predicted the scenario of the COVID-19 pandemic until the end of 2020
Summary
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an ongoing pandemic that resulted in global health, economic, and social crises [1]. It has created the worst health challenges since the Spanish flu in 1918 and the largest worldwide recession since the Great Depression [2]. The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was first reported in China in December 2019 and has become a pandemic that resulted in more than one million deaths and infected over 35 million people worldwide. A continent-wide analysis of COVID-19 cases from 31st December 2019 to 14th June 2020 was performed along with socio-economic factors associated with mortality rates as well as a predicted future scenario of COVID-19 cases until the end of 2020. Conclusion: Epidemiological and clinical features of COVID-19 should be better defined, since they can play an import role in future strategies to control this pandemic
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