Global epidemiology of coronavirus disease 2019: disease incidence, daily cumulative index, mortality, and their association with country healthcare resources and economic status

Abstract

It has been 2 months since the first case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was reported in Wuhan. So far, COVID-19 has affected 84,503 patients in 57 countries/territories and caused 2,924 deaths in nine countries. However, the epidemiology data differ across countries. Although China had higher morbidity and mortality than other sites, the number of new cases per day in China is lesser than that outside of China since February 26, 2020. The incidence ranged from 61.4 per 1,000,000 people in Republic of Korea to 0.0002 per 1,000,000 people in India. The daily cumulative index (DCI) of COVID-19 (cumulative cases/no. of days between the first reported case and February 29, 2020) was greatest in China (1,320.85 per day), followed by Republic of Korea (78.78 per day), Iran (43.11 per day), and Italy (30.62 per day). However, the DCI in other countries/territories were less than 10 per day. Several effective measures including restricting travel from China, controlling the distribution of masks, extensive investigation of COVID-19 spread, and at once daily press conference by government to inform and educate people were aggressively conducted in Taiwan. This is probably the reason why there was only 39 cases (as of February 29, 2020) with a DCI of 1 case per day in Taiwan, which was much lower than that of nearby countries, such as Republic of Korea and Japan. Additionally, the incidence and mortality were correlated with DCI. However, further study and continued monitoring are needed to better understand the underlying mechanism of COVID-19.