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Associate factors to COVID-19 magnitude in developing countries: Is there an African specificity?

Jean-François Kobiané, Institut Supérieur des Sciences de la Population/Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo
Sibi GUISSOU, Institut National de La Statistique Et de La Démographie

A number of hypothesis have been stated to explain the low magnitude of the Covid-19 in Africa. Among these, the age structure of the continent characterized by a huge proportion of youth and reversely a low percentage of older persons, the climate of the continent hotter as compared to other regions in the world, a long immunization history on the continent. Using diverse demographic, economic, social, climate and health related variables on 104 countries from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, we apply a Principal Components Analysis (PCA), followed by an Ascending Hierarchical Classification (AHC) to highlight the specificity of African countries. The two first components resulting from the PCA, the demographic axis and the environment & climate axis oppose African countries to Asia and Latin American countries. The AHC reveals three clusters: cluster 1 (in majority African countries) characterized in average by a very lower numbers of deaths related to Covid-19; cluster 2 (in majority Asian and Latin American countries) characterized by a number of Covid-19 cases higher than the overall average, and cluster 3 (China, India, Brazil, and Mexico), with deaths related to Covid-19 four times higher than average.

Keywords: COVID-19, Cross-country comparative analyses, Health and morbidity

See extended abstract.

  Presented in Session P5.