Abstract
Nearly all economies of the world suffered from the sudden outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic emanating from Wuhan City of China to the rest of the world. A number of studies have been conducted to investigate the drivers of the spread of the viral infection. We differ from existing studies by employing a cross-sectional quantile regression approach to uncover socio-economic conditions that are instrumental in the spread of COVID-19 in Africa, Asia, America and Europe. Across the continents, we observed that life expectancy, the size of the aged population and spending on the health sector have significant impacts on the spread of COVID-19. We also noted the specific roles of out-of-pocket spending, net migration and tourism attraction for Africa, America and Europe, respectively, in driving the viral spread. We therefore draw policy implications in terms of the need for improved spending on health sector across continents and the need to intensify health checks for travelers and immigrants, and also the need to emphasize regular check-ups for all individuals across continents since current realities have shown that no age-group is spared of contracting the viral infection.
Highlights
COVID-19 is a coronavirus disease that became a global public health emergency after World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a global pandemic on March 11th 2020
Quantile Regression Estimates of COVID-19 Prevalence in Africa Our results show that at the lowest quantile, out-of-pocket spending and life expectancy are significant influencers of coronavirus prevalence in Africa
Considering the highest quantile (99%), socio-economic factors including the level of adult population, health care spending, out-ofpocket spending on healthcare and life expectancy appear as the significant determinants of COVID-19 prevalence on the continent
Summary
COVID-19 is a coronavirus disease that became a global public health emergency after World Health Organization (WHO) declared it a global pandemic on March 11th 2020 Atypical of this strand of virus as confirmed by health specialists is its ability to transmit from one host to another even before the 14-day gestation period, which made it difficult to be contained relative to other health crises, such as, Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak of 2014 and other past viral infections. The report (World Health Organization (WHO), 2020) showed that the US accounted for 32.5% of the number of confirmed cases, followed by Spain (6.9%), Italy (6.6%), the UK (5.3%) and Germany (5.1%) These countries had a combined share of 62.9% in the total number of coronavirus-induced fatalities
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