The socio-economic determinants of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic

Viktor Stojkoski; Zoran Utkovski; Petar Jolakoski; Dragan Tevdovski; Ljupco Kocarev

Based on the current data, we observe patterns that suggest that there are only few determinants (factors) that have explanatory power for the coronavirus outcome. As we will discuss in more detail in the sequel, we observe that some of these factors are strongly related to the level of economic development and to the effect of population size in social interactions. However, we stress that at this point in time, our observations require a careful interpretation for several reasons, including the following: (i) the analysis is based on aggregate quantities, i.e. averages across geographic locations. As such, it does not include spatial inhomogeneity and hence can not capture (potentially) significant interactive local dynamics; (ii) the parameters governing the time evolution of the disease spread and pandemic outcome are themselves dynamic, and depend on the stage of the country's epidemic and on the changing social response efforts. While being aware of these potential shortcomings of our formulation, in the absence of realistic models that adequately cover all relevant aspects, this study provides the first step towards a more comprehensive understanding of the socio-economic factors of the coronavirus pandemic. We expect that, with the availability of new data and the improved understanding of the dynamics of the coronavirus pandemic, some of these shortcomings will be overcome, yielding a more reliable interpretation of the results.