Why are Asian countries outperforming the Western world in controlling COVID-19 pandemic?

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 already caused more than 1,260,000 deaths around the world. However, mortality rates are not equal amongst the different countries. Mortality rates are ranging from less than 1 death per million in Taiwan, Vietnam and Thailand to 1,112 deaths per million in Belgium. In the present article, we report a striking difference in mean per million mortality between Asian and European countries (2.7 vs 197 deaths per million population, p < 0.001). In addition, we confirmed that the later a specific country was hit by the epidemic, the milder the impact on mortality during the first 50 days was. We analyzed several factors that may have contributed to this discrepancy including population age, previous experience of epidemics in the modern era, social acceptance of physical distancing and face masks, percentage of active smokers and lastly genetic prothrombotic mutations.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• pandemic
• mortality rate
• Asia
• Europe
• America

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Departmental funds only.