Population Growth Rates and Pattern of COVID-19 Deaths Per Million

Background: Population growth rate (PGR )can reflect the age group structure of the community because low PGR usually indicates low birth rate and old age structure of the community. As PGR is a single easily recalled from public sources (unlike the age distribution), we designed this study to look for any relation between PGR's impact on COVID-19 mortality and looking for a new indicator for COVID-19 mortality risk assessment. The importance of this study is to study the relation between COVID -19 pandemic and the universal trend in decreasing PGRs and continual change in population structure.

Methods: Ninety-two countries with a total population of more than ten million people were chosen as a sample for this study. We used publically available data for PGRs and COVID-19 deaths per one million populations. These countries were classified into three groups according to COVID-19 death rate per million people as follows: < 1000 / (62 Countries), COVID-19 death rate 1000-2000 (11 Countries), and > 2000 (19 Countries).

Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used as a statistical method to provide information about levels of variability within a regression model and form a basis for testing the fitted logarithmic model for significance.

Results: PGR was inversely related to COVID-19 mortality in a too highly significant association (p-value 0.000).

Conclusion: We described a novel method to predict countries at increased risk for COVID-19 death through PGR estimation. Low PGR is correlated with the increased COVID-19 mortality rate for COVID-19 and vice versa.