We compare COVD-19 daily confirmed cases per Million population (Mpop) for July 13, 2021 as recorded by Johns Hopkins University (JHU) for European countries and compare it with various demographics and metrics.
Demographics
| Demographics | Correlation Coefficient | Source of Demographic |
|---|---|---|
| Health costs per capita $ | 1.1% | https://www.oecd.org/health/health-data.htm |
| Income per capita $ | 3.4% | |
| Median age years | 1.42% | https://population.un.org/wpp/DataQuery/ |
| Pupulation density / sq km | 10% | https://population.un.org/wpp/DataQuery/ (for population) and https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/ for area |
Metrics
| Metric | Source of Metric |
|---|---|
| COVID-19 vaccine doses / 100 people | https://www.statista.com/statistics/1196071/covid-19-vaccination-rate-in-europe-by-country/ |
| % delta variant in last 4 weeks. | https://www.gisaid.org/hcov19-variants/ |
% Delta variant
I can find no delta variant data for Albania, Belarus, Bulgaria. Croatia, Cyprus, Czeck Republic, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, or Turkey.
There is a discussion on why the COVID-18 delta variant has spread so rapidly in the UK at https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57489740 where they point out "But this is not a definitive record of how many cases there are - it's a record of how many are spotted, and the UK has a very good system for spotting variants. So it's likely these figures disguise a much greater incidence of the variant in some countries that carry out less sequencing - genetic analysis - of the virus."
- According to https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/224113/coronavirus-infections-rising-exponentially-england-react/ the % delta variant is increasing by a factor of 2 in 11 days.
For the US, Fauci says % delta variant is doubling in US every 2 weeks (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/06/22/fauci-delta-variant-doubling-in-us-every-two-weeks-in-greatest-threat-to-eradicating-covid/?sh=633ad681777d)
- The 7 day smoothed daily confirmed cases per Mpop increases with the % Delta variant, with the UK leading.
- The Pearson correlation coefficient indicates a 21% association between the daily confirmed cases per Mpop and the % Delta variant.
- See https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57489740 for a discussion of why the COVID-19 variant has spread so quickly in the UK.
The Western and Southern European nations lead in numbers of cases (NL, ES, UK, PT, MT, BE, IE, DK are all above 100 daily confirmed cases).
- For the Scandinavian countries Norway and Sweden are very similar but not Denmark. There is no % Delta variant data for Finland.
Looking at the daily confirmed COVID-19 case as a function of time, we see the chart below:
It can be seen that the UK and Portugal (PT) both started on an increase in confirmed cases around 6/15/2021, followed in turn by Spain (ES) around 6/28/2021, and Ireland (IE) around 6/30/2021, Denmark (DK), Belgium (BE), France (FR), Malta (MT), and Switzerland (CH).
The Netherlands and Malta appear to have the fastest growth in cases, followed by Spain.
Vaccine doses per 100 population
According to the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2021/coronavirus-vaccine-inequality-global/) 45 percent of all vaccine doses administered so far have gone to just 16 percent of the world’s population in what the World Bank considers high-income countries.
If one takes the subset of European countries, we see (below) there is a Pearson correlation of doses/100 population to income per capita of ~ 12%.
Looking at the confirmed cases for European countries on 7-13-2021 versus the vaccine does per 100 population below:
we see the increase in cases with increased vaccination is driven by the Western & Southern European nations: UK, NL, ES, PT, LU, BE, and IE. AT, DE and to a lesser extent CH buck this trend.
If one removes the Western & Southern European nations then the slope changes sign, see below:
Further investigation reveals close by nations cluster together, e.g.( FI, NO, SE, LT ), (HR, RS)