COVID-19 Mortality in Europe, by Latitude and Obesity Status: A Geo-Spatial Analysis in 40 Countries.

Stefanos Tyrovolas,Dimosthenes Panagiotakos,Marianthi Morena,Thomas Tsiampalis,Christos Chalkias,Antigoni Faka,Sotirios Tsiodras,Angela Y M Leung

doi:10.3390/nu14030471

Abstract

On 30 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the current novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a public health emergency of international concern and later characterized it as a pandemic. New data show that excess body mass and vitamin D deficiency might be related to the disease severity and mortality. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether latitude, as a proxy of sunlight exposure and Vitamin D synthesis, and prevalent obesity among European populations, is related to COVID-19 spread and severity. European COVID-19 data (incidence and fatality), including information on the prevalence of obesity, social distancing, and others were obtained by the “Our World in Data” website on 17 April 2021. Adjusted analysis showed that higher COVID-19 incidence and fatality were pictured in countries being in higher latitude, both during the whole period, as well as, during the time period 1 November 2020–31 March 2021. Higher incidence and fatality of COVID-19 were observed where the prevalence of overweight/obesity was higher during the whole time period, whereas during the time period 1 November 2020–31 March 2021, only COVID-19 incidence was higher but not a fatality. The present results provide insights for targeted interventions and preventive strategies against COVID-19.

Highlights

Introduction published maps and institutional affilOn 30 January 2020, the current novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was declared an emergency of public health and international concern by the World HealthOrganization (WHO), and a few days later, a pandemic [1,2]
Incidence of COVID-19 was defined as the number of new cases and fatality of COVID-19 was defined as the number of deaths reported in each European country
In order to account for differences in the populations among the European countries, both the incidence and the fatality of COVID-19 were expressed as the number of new cases and deaths per 1 million population, respectively

Summary

Introduction

Introduction published maps and institutional affilOn 30 January 2020, the current novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was declared an emergency of public health and international concern by the World HealthOrganization (WHO), and a few days later, a pandemic [1,2]. On 31 December 2019, the first cases of unknown aetiology pneumonia were reported from Wuhan City, China [3] After this date, extended international transmission outside China, was observed among various European Union (EU) countries (e.g., France, Germany) and globally [4,5]. Dye et al [8] reported that COVID-19 mortality among European countries, marking as final date 31 July, varied more than 100-fold. These geospatial variations are mainly attributed to the implementation efficacy and timing of several prevention measures, including social distancing and other health policies to prevent and contain the spread of COVID-19 [6]

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