COVID-19 Pandemic Severity Criterion Based on the Number of Deaths and the Uneven Distribution of These

The aim of this article is to define a criterion related to the number of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) deaths in different countries to compare them themselves in two aspects. First, the higher the number of deaths, the worse it is for society; second, if the inequality of deaths is greater between regions of a country, the worse the assessment of pandemic management should be. On a global scale, this unevenness is evident because it is not controlled by anything. In particular countries, it should be the result of efficient and honest management of the spread of the epidemic. The authors assume in the proposed algorithm that the number of deaths in individual organizational units of the state (regions, states, provinces, etc.) is known in the existing administrative division. By considering the population numbers in these units, the Lorentz curve is prepared, and the Gini coefficient is calculated for the entire world and for individual countries such as USA, India, Brazil, Poland, and the Balkan and Eastern European countries with the highest number of deaths per million inhabitants in the world. Moreover, an attempt was made to present the universal mortality rate in a given country in the form of a bicriterion combining the Gini index and the number of deaths per million inhabitants achieved. We obtained definitely different values of this criterion for the countries under consideration. The method is universal and allows calculating the criterion for any country or group of countries.

Automated summary

This article introduces a criterion for comparing the number of COVID-19 deaths in different countries, and applies it to global and individual country data analysis. The method is universal and applicable to any country or group of countries.