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Abstract Background: There is some evidence about the role of human development in the incidence and mortality of some diseases. The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between COVID-19 incidence and mortality with development indexes in different regions of the world.Methods: This ecological study was conducted on data from January 11 to August 23, 2020. The development indexes included were Human development index (HDI), Inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI), the Gini Coefficient, Gender Development Index (GDI), Gender Inequality Index (GII) and their components. The development indexes was obtained from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). COVID-19 cases and mortality data of the countries involved in the pandemic were obtained from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). Data was analyzed by Spearman correlation coefficients and negative binomial regression through SPSS26. Results: The highest and lowest incidence and mortality rates were in the AMRO and WPRO regions, respectively. The development indexes had no a significant linear correlation with COVID-19 incidence and mortality except in WPRO, where there was direct significant correlation between life expectancy at birth and inequality adjusted life expectancy with COVID-19 incidence and mortality (PConclusions: Our findings suggests limited evidence that countries level of development may directly influence morbidity and mortality from COVID-19. However, with regard to the ecological nature of this study, the reason for this association is difficult to determine.
Torkian et al. (Thu,) studied this question.