COVID-19: Regional Differences in Austria.

Hanns Moshammer,Lisbeth Weitensfelder,Michael Poteser

doi:10.3390/ijerph19031644

Abstract

In the turbulent year 2020, overshadowed by the global COVID-19 pandemic, Austria experienced multiple waves of increased case incidence. While governmental measures to curb the numbers were based on current knowledge of infection risk factors, a retrospective analysis of incidence and lethality at the district level revealed correlations of relative infection risk with socioeconomic, geographical, and behavioral population parameters. We identified unexpected correlations between political orientation and smoking behavior and COVID-19 infection risk and/or mortality. For example, a decrease in daily smokers by 2.3 percentage points would be associated with an increase in cumulative incidence by 10% in the adjusted model, and an increase in voters of the right-wing populist party by 1.6 percentage points with an increase in cumulative mortality by 10%. While these parameters are apparently only single elements of complex causal chains that finally lead to individual susceptibility and vulnerability levels, our findings might have identified ecological parameters that can be utilized to develop fine-tuned communications and measures in upcoming challenges of this and other pandemics.

Highlights

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is in many ways unique in human history
An initial apparent connection between altitude and case numbers did not hold when controlled for federal country, but sea level and federal country are hard to disentangle, as some federal countries are located at higher altitude than others
A possible effect of sea level could work via population density, since areas with lower population density in Austria are often at higher altitudes, and population density tended to seem protective—a finding we have already reported for the districts of Vienna [43]