Modelling the Global Prevalence of COVID-19: An Econometric Approach

Virtually all economies of the world were caught up unawares with the sudden outbreak and rapid spread of coronavirus pandemic 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. To differ with these studies which were mostly epidemiological-based, we employed a cross-sectional quantile regression approach to uncover both the common and region-specific socio-economic conditions that are instrumental in the spread of the pandemic across four continents of the world including Africa, Asia, America and Europe. Across the four continents, we observed that age characteristics proxied by life expectancy and the size of the aged population, as well as, overall spending on the health sector have significant impact on the spread of COVID-19. We also noted the significant roles of out-of-pocket spending on healthcare in the case of Africa, net migration in the case of America and tourism attraction in the case of Europe in driving the prevalence of coronavirus. 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.