Exploring COVID-19 Progression Patterns

 

Zakarya1, Al Zalak1, Sahar Alfahoum2, Razan Zohairee3

1Ph.D, Damascus, Syria.

2Professor of Biochemistry, Damascus University, Syria.

3Department of Toxicology and Pharmacology, Master Degree, Damascus University, Damascus, Syria.

*Corresponding Author E-mail: dr.zak2002@gmail.com, sahar_fahoum@yahoo.com, rita.joo@hotmail.com

 

ABSTRACT:

Background: A novel coronavirus COVID-19 causing acute illness with severe symptoms, represents the causative agent of a contagious potentially lethal disease. COVID-19 was declared as pandemic by WHO. Aims: This Research aims to study the COVID-19 outbreaks in the fifteen most impacted countries in the world, find the relationship between the precautionary measures of governments and COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths, and to forecast the pandemic in the following short time. Methods: The global numbers of confirmed cases and deaths of COVID-19 were obtained from the European Union Data. The data of governmentsʹ response actions for COVID-19 were estimated using the Oxford study. Box-Jenkins methodology, ARIMA model, R package were used in data analysis. Results: The rate of COVID-19 confirmed cases is 0.4 per thousand, and the death case rate is 0.03 per thousand of the world population. The rate of death cases was the lowest in Brazil, and the highest in Spain. The usefulness of precautionary measures and its effect on the number of confirmed cases and deaths in the different countries were estimated. A high correlation was established concerning the applied measurements and time of application. The model used for forecasting the expected cases was consistent with our tested result, while the model for forecasting death showed a fair consistently. Conclusion: We conclude that the health system must be reviewed, and these precautionary measures evaluated whether they are beneficial or more stringent conditions should be imposed.

 

KEYWORDS: COVID-19, Patterns, ARIMA Models, Measures, Forecast, Countries.

 

 


INTRODUCTION:

Background: Emergence of new viral infections are major public health threats, in particular, viruses from wildlife hosts, causing diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002 and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012. A novel virus recognized as COVID-19 was discovered in Wuhan, China, at the end of 20191.

 

A group of patients was admitted to hospitals with an initial diagnosis of pneumonia of an unknown etiology on December 2019. These patients were epidemiologically linked to a wet and seafood animal wholesale market in the center of the Chinese city of Wuhan2,3.

 

The first cases were reported on December 2019, some patients were hospitalized with acute respiratory distress syndrome SARS4. By January 2, 2020, 41 admitted hospital patients had been identified as having laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection, most of the patient were men 73%, and less than half of these patients had underlying diseases, including diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease5.

 

On 30 January 2020, World Health Organization WHO officially declared the COVID-19 epidemic a public health emergency of international concern, on 11 March, WHO announced the COVID-19 as a pandemic6. Scientists from several countries have analyzed genomes of the causative agent, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and they predominantly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife7,8. Previous studies have shown that some bat SAR Sr-CoVs have the potential to infect humans9,10,11.

Coronavirus disease COVID-19 is caused by 2019-nCoV, the etiology of this illness is now attributed to a novel virus belonging to the coronavirus CoV family, and represents the causative agent of a potentially lethal disease. Two other coronavirus infections-SARS and MERS in both caused severe respiratory syndrome in humans12, all three of these emerging infectious diseases leading to a global spread are caused by β-coronaviruses13. Common symptoms at onset of illness were fever, cough, and myalgia or fatigue; less common symptoms were sputum production, headache, haemoptysis, and diarrhea. Dyspnoea developed of some patients to acute respiratory distress syndrome and, acute cardiac injury5. The risk of serious illness and death in COVID-19 cases among patients increases with older age groups14,15, and people of all ages with underlying medical conditions such as: Heart disease, diabetes, lung disease, liver disease, kidney disease, severe obesity and people who are immune compromised16. The risk of transmission from an individual with coronavirus 2 (2019- n CoV) infection varies by the type and duration of exposure, use of preventive measures, and likely individual factors (eg, the amount of virus in respiratory secretions). People who are infected often have manifest symptoms of illness. Some people who are asymptomatic may be able to affect our ability to contain and trace the spread of the virus17.  Most secondary infections have been described among household contacts, in congregate or health care settings when personal protective equipment was not used including hospitals and long-term care facilities18.

 

WHO recommended measures to slow COVID-19 progression, transmission, and prevent outbreaks. These measures include personal, environmental, and travel related interventions19. Governments have worked to deal with the virus by taking a set of measures; the University of Oxford has calibrated these measures. Oxford University has established calibration measures, which provided a systematic way to track the measurement adopted by each country facing COVID-19, and to describe variation in governments' responses20.

 

We are going to describe the COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths patterns in time series, and the relationship between the precautionary measures of each government to COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths in selected countries, and forth to forecast the pandemic progression in the next two month following the preparing the manuscript.

 

Subject and Methods:

Data collection: The global numbers of confirmed cases and deaths of COVID-19 Were obtained from the European Union Data (EUD) from 31 Dec 2019 to 30 Apr 202021.

The data of governmentsʹ response actions of COVID-19. Were estimated using the Oxford study. This data describes Oxford COVID-19 Government Tracker (OxCGRT) collection and presents some basic measures of variation across governments20.

 

Our study will consider COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths in the fifteen most impacted countries in the world; The United States of America, Spain, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Turkey, China, Iran, Russia, Brazil, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

 

Statistic methods and Models:

Firstly, we describe the total number and the rates of the COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths patterns in the fifteen most impacted countries in the world each according to the total population of that country from 31 Dec 2019 to 30 April 2020.

 

Secondly, we describe the COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths patterns over time by using the linear regression model in the selected countries. Thirdly, we compare the confirmed cases and deaths of COVID-19 with the governmentsʹ response to the measures adopted. Fourthly, we forecast the pandemic progression in May and June 2020. The Time Series Forecasting depending on The Box-Jenkins approach is applied22,23.

 

‎‎"ARIMA", short for 'Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average' is a class of models, that equation can be used in our study to forecast the future values and check the residuals24,25 by the R package which uses a variation of the Hyndman-Khandaker algorithm26.

 

Results (Data Analysis):

We have obtained the following results.

 

First: Patterns description of COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths worldwide.

The total number of confirmed cases in the world from 31 Dec 2019 until 30 April 2020 reached 3131302 cases, according to population worldwide, with cases rate 0.402 per thousand, and the total number of deaths reached 227319 cases with death rate 0.029 per thousand.

 

Since 31 Dec 2019, it can be described that the curve of the total number of COVID-19 confirmed cases took an upward trend worldwide, and the world reached the stabilization stage of infections during April 2020, the number of confirmed cases pattern peaked on 26 April 2020, at 101716 cases, ( Figure 1-A).

 


Fig. 1: confirmed cases, deaths patterns, worldwide, from 31 Dec 2019 until 30 Apr 2020

 


The peak of mortality exceeds the peak of confirmed cases in April 2020. For more details for every selected countries, see Appendix 1.

 

The total number of confirmed deaths pattern worldwide shows an escalating pattern, (Figure 1 –B), the highest mortality rate in the world was on 16 April 2020, where the total deaths reached 10520 cases, and our study shows a death rate of 1863 cases per day during the four shown months. The infections rate per day showed a clearly escalating pattern in 2020 (328 cases in Jan 2701 cases in Feb, 23066 cases in March and 78471 cases in Apr), with the rate for four months per day was 25666 cases. The mortality rate per day was 6314 cases in April.

 

The total number of confirmed cases pattern in the fifteen most impacted countries with the total number of mortalities in these countries until the date of preparing this paper was established (Table 1); it appears clearly that America, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom and Germany are leading in the number of confirmed cases respectively. America maintains the first rank in the number of mortality also followed by Italy, Spain, France, and the United Kingdom.


 

Table 1: confirmed cases and deaths rates, according to the population in the selected countries, from 31 Dec 2020 to30 Apr 2020

Order

Countries

Cases

Deaths

Population 2020 (thousands)

Cases Rate

Deaths Rate

1

Belgium

47859

7501

37742

1.268

0.199

2

Brazil

78162

5466

1439324

0.054

0.004

3

Canada

51587

2996

11590

4.451

0.258

4

China

83944

4637

84339

0.995

0.055

5

France

128442

24087

145934

0.880

0.165

6

Germany

159119

6288

67886

2.344

0.093

7

Iran

93657

5957

212559

0.441

0.028

8

Italy

203591

27682

60462

3.367

0.458

9

Netherlands

38802

4711

17135

2.264

0.275

10

Russia

99399

972

83993

1.183

0.012

11

Spain

216295

24543

46755

4.626

0.525

12

Switzerland

29324

1407

8655

3.388

0.163

13

Turkey

117589

3081

65274

1.801

0.047

14

United Kingdom

165221

26097

83784

1.972

0.311

15

United States of America

1039909

60966

331003

3.142

0.184

Total 15 top countries

2552900

206391

2696435

0.947

0.077

Total cases worldwide

3131302

227319

7794799

0.402

0.029

 


The rate of confirmed cases, according to the population in the selected countries, was established. Spain acquired the highest rate of infections and deaths, while Brazil has the lowest rate of confirmed cases and deaths. The rate of confirmed cases worldwide reached 0.4 per thousand compared to 0.03 of mortality per thousand, noting that the total number of confirmed cases in the selected countries represents 80% of the total confirmed cases in the world, while the total number confirmed deaths reached 90% of mortalities of COVID-19 in the world. The pattern of confirmed cases and deaths by country in Appendix 1. By using data according to continents, the rates of confirmed cases were distributed as not exceeding 1.3% in Africa, whereas the highest was in America reaching 43%, followed by Europe 40%, and Asia was 16%.

 

Second: The linear regression model of COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths.

Where the linear regression in the selected countries of confirmed cases appears strongly over time in the USA and Canada followed by UK, Netherland and Turkey, respectively.

 

The linear regression model is weak with R= 0.22 in China as shown in (Table 2) and it appears that the number of confirmed cases tends to decrease significantly.

The linear regression model for these countries clarifies that the highest value with R= 0.83 was in Canada and USA, (Table 2).

 

By comparing the models of mortality among the selected countries, we found that the highest value of R regression was in Turkey, Italy, followed the UK and then the Netherlands, Iran and Canada, respectively and last USA and Germany, whereas the lowest significant value of linear regression model was in China R= 0.03. For more details, see Appendix 2 and 3.

 

Third: Precaution measurement in the selected countries and their relationship to COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths.

The appearance of the confirmed cases according, to the onset in each country were in China, the USA, Canada, Germany, France and the UK, respectively by end of January and in Russia, Spain, Belgium, Iran, Italy, Brazil, Switzerland and Netherlands in February.

 

We depended on the Oxford study, to obtain the assignment index for our selected countries, and compared this index among each of the fifteen countries, by using a Spearman correlation coefficient, (Table 3).


 

Table 2: The linear regression model

Countries

R

R Square

Adjusted R Square

Significance

By

Cases

Death

Cases

Death

Cases

Death

Cases

death

USA

0.83

0.73

0.67

0.53

0.67

0.53

0.000

0.000

Spain

0.64

0.71

0.41

0.50

0.41

0.50

0.000

0.000

Italy

0.73

0.76

0.53

0.57

0.53

0.57

0.000

0.000

Germany

0.63

0.73

0.40

0.53

0.40

0.53

0.000

0.000

UK

0.82

0.76

0.67

0.58

0.67

0.57

0.000

0.000

France

0.63

0.63

0.40

0.39

0.39

0.39

0.000

0.000

Turkey

0.76

0.79

0.58

0.62

0.57

0.62

0.000

0.000

China

0.22

0.03

0.05

0.00

0.04

-0.01

0.004

0.000

Iran

0.70

0.74

0.49

0.55

0.49

0.54

0.000

0.000

Russia

0.69

0.66

0.47

0.43

0.47

0.43

0.000

0.000

Brazil

0.72

0.69

0.51

0.48

0.51

0.47

0.000

0.000

Belgium

0.74

0.69

0.54

0.48

0.54

0.47

0.000

0.000

Canada

0.83

0.74

0.68

0.54

0.68

0.54

0.000

0.000

Netherlands

0.77

0.76

0.58

0.57

0.58

0.57

0.000

0.000

Switzerland

0.54

0.66

0.29

0.43

0.28

0.43

0.000

0.000

 

Table 3: spearman correlation coefficients between precautionary measures and the selected countries

By

Index Brazil

Index Canada

Index Switzerland

Index

China

Index Germany

Index France

Index United kingdom

Index Belgium

.918**

.903**

.916**

.252**

.944**

.955**

.939**

Index Brazil

1

.867**

.978**

0.072

.904**

.910**

.872**

Index Canada

 

1

.858**

.283**

.936**

.947**

.923**

Index Switzerland

 

 

1

.195*

.918**

.912**

.845**

Index China

 

 

 

1

.391**

.317**

.241**

Index Germany

 

 

 

 

1

.986**

.944**

Index France

 

 

 

 

 

1

.957**

Index United kingdom

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

Index Iran

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Index Itely

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Index Netherlands

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Index Russia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Index Spain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Index Turkey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Index United States

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

N

113

108

107

113

108

113

113

 

 

 

 

Table No. 3: Continue

By

Index Iran

Index Itely

Index Netherlands

Index Russia

Index Spain

Index Turkey

Index United States

Index Belgium

.922**

.965**

.868**

.957**

.954**

.970**

.979**

Index Brazil

.928**

.916**

.958**

.913**

.897**

.894**

.930**

Index Canada

.858**

.943**

.840**

.939**

.929**

.951**

.916**

Index Switzerland

.949**

.909**

.935**

.895**

.886**

.876**

.918**

Index China

.235*

.337**

0.15

.246**

.288**

.255**

.266**

Index Germany

.914**

.977**

.847**

.966**

.951**

.960**

.960**

Index France

.905**

.984**

.843**

.975**

.958**

.970**

.971**

Index United kingdom

.858**

.958**

.796**

.971**

.962**

.963**

.961**

Index Iran

1

.931**

.899**

.900**

.888**

.897**

.917**

Index Itely

 

1

.848**

.974**

.967**

.974**

.978**

Index Netherlands

 

 

1

.872**

.852**

.840**

.865**

Index Russia

 

 

 

1

.977**

.975**

.973**

Index Spain

 

 

 

 

1

.961**

.970**

Index Turkey

 

 

 

 

 

1

.967**

Index United States

 

 

 

 

 

 

1

N

111

113

100

113

113

113

113

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

 


The Spearman correlation coefficient was significant among all countries, with the exception of China where the relationship appears weak with all the selected countries. The relationship between the number of confirmed cases and deaths in the selected countries with the index was established, it was very high, (Table 3). For more details, see Appendix 4 and 5. The lowest value of the correlation was in China, with 0.541 for confirmed cases and 0.68 for deaths, the value of both was significant, (Table 4).

 

Table 4: Correlation Spearman between confirmed cases and deaths, according to index.

Spearman's rho

Deaths

Cases

Index Belgium

.814**

.898**

Index Brazil

.878**

.942**

Index Canada

.833**

.877**

Index Switzerland

.884**

.956**

Index China

.686**

.541**

Index Germany

.815**

.920**

Index France

.903**

.900**

Index UK

.855**

.880**

Index Iran

.946**

.956**

Index Italy

.902**

.930**

Index Netherlands

.938**

.943**

Index Russia

.744**

.861**

Index Spain

.867**

.895**

Index Turkey

.814**

.851**

Index USA

.896**

.905**

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

 

Fourth: Forecasting COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths using ARIMA models.

ARIMA models provide an approach to time series forecasting. That aims to describe the autocorrelations in our data of the number COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths, first for the whole world. The second for each of the selected countries.

Through using automated algorithm at the world level, Figure 2 shows the number of confirmed cases with 80% and 95% probability. The forecasted average number of confirmed cases during May and Jun 2020 [6.8-12.2] million cases with 80% probability, and [5.4-13.5] million confirmed cases with 95% probability. According to ARIMA (0,1,1) model with drift. Moreover, the point forecast in average 95075 cases per day [68337-121812] with 80% probability, and [54183-135967] with 95% probability.

 

 

Fig 2: the best model of Forecast for the number of confirmed cases worldwide, *with drift

 

The next step was to check the residuals by plotting the autocorrelation function (ACF) of the residuals, and doing a portmanteau test of the residuals. Figure 3 shows the ACF plot of the residuals from the ARIMA (0,1,1) with drift model showing that all autocorrelations approximately are within the threshold limits, indicating that the residuals are behaving like white noise.

 

Fig. 3: residual plots for the ARIMA (0,1,1)with drift model for the number of confirmed cases worldwide.

 

By the same steps, we generated the model time series forecasting to the number of death cases in the world (Figure 4), the best model ARIMA(1,1,1) with the drift. Through that, we established the number of deaths with 80% and 95% probability. The average number of deaths during May and Jun 2020, was [319653- 637726] respectively with 80% probability and [235464- 721915] deaths with 95% probability. In addition, the point forecast in average was 7978 deaths per day [5328-10629] with 80% probability, and [3924-12032] with 95% probability.

 

Fig. 4: process to generate the best model for the number of deaths worldwide

 

Secondly, we summarized all process to generate models for the number of confirmed cases and deaths for each of the selected countries; Table 5 shows the best models of forecast for confirmed cases and deaths with patterns for each country in Appendix 6 and 7.


 

Table 5: forecast models of COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths with patterns by country

Countries

Model

ACIC

Ljung-Box Test

Patterns

Forecast power

Q

P- Value

Unit root test

Belguim

Cases

ARIMA(2,1,2)

1672

7.18

0.305

Dedcrease

Good

Deaths

ARIMA(2,1,1)

1245

22,39

0.002

Stable

Good

Brazil

Cases

ARIMA(0,2,2)

1769

35

0.000

Increase

Good

Deaths

ARIMA(3,1,0) *

1192

5.86

0.439

Increase

Fair

Canada

Cases

ARIMA(0,1,1) *

1580

12.28

0.139

Increase

Good

Deaths

ARIMA(1,1,0) *

972

44.11

0.000

Increase

Good

China

Cases

ARIMA(0,1,1)

2084

2.06

0.990

Stable

Good

Deaths

ARIMA(0,0,0)**

1522

2.09

0.990

Stable

NO

France

Cases

ARIMA(3,1,0)

1949

7.81

0.350

Stable

Good

Deaths

ARIMA(0,1,1)

1629

24.87

0.003

Stable

Good

Germany

Cases

ARIMA(3,1,3)

1903

31.41

0.000

Unstable

Bad

Deaths

ARIMA(2,1,2)

1114

17.87

0.007

Unstable

Bad

Iran

Cases

ARIMA(0.1.2)

1828

1.29

0.996

Stable

Good

Deaths

ARIMA(1,1,2)

1120

2.68

0.913

Decrease

Fair

Italy

Cases

ARIMA(0,1,0)

1811

56.43

0.000

Stable

NO

Deaths

ARIMA(2,1,2)

1320

13.99

0.030

Unstable

Bad

Netherlands

Cases

ARIMA(2,1,2)

1430

15.2

0.019

Unstable

Bad

Deaths

ARIMA(0,1,1)

1114

39.41

0.000

Stable

Good

Russia

Cases

ARIMA(2,2,1)

1683

23.92

0.001

Increase

Good

Deaths

ARIMA(2,2,2)

700

28.14

0.000

Increase

Good

Spain

Cases

ARIMA(2,1,2)

1960

15.53

0.017

Stable

Fair

Deaths

ARIMA(1,1,3)

1405

9.56

0.145

Increase

Fair

Uk

Cases

ARIMA(5,1,4) *

1854

18.41

0.000

Stable

Fair

Deaths

ARIMA(2,1,0)

1506

47.4

0.000

Unstable

Good

USA

Cases

ARIMA(0,1,1) *

2331

23.42

0.003

Increase

Good

Deaths

ARIMA(5,1,1)

1779

13.8

0.008

Unstable

Fair

Turkey

Cases

ARIMA(0,1,0)

1709

51.05

0.000

Stable

NO

Deaths

ARIMA(1,1,1)

653

17.35

0.027

Decrease

Good

Switzerland

Cases

ARIMA(1,1,0)

1539

55.49

0.000

Stable

Good

Deaths

ARIMA(2,1,2)

934

12.88

0.045

Decrease

Good

Total

Cases

ARIMA(0,1,1) *

2437

22.96

0.003

increase

Good

Deaths

ARIMA(1,1,1) *

1934

59.1

0.000

increase

Fair

*With drift, **With non -zero mean


 

DISCUSSION:

COVID-19 formed a state of emergency in the world, after the announcement by the WHO,27 the governments scrambled to limit the transmission of COVID-19 because of the increasing number of confirmed cases and deaths, and it constituted an unprecedented challenge.

 

Upon returning to the rate of morbidity and mortality at the level of the world, we found that the rate of confirmed cases is 0.4 per thousand, and the death cases rate is 0.03 per thousand.

 

The mortality rate due to COVID-19 is small figures compared to other types of deaths, such as mortality of cancer28 and cardiovascular diseases29.

 

The rate of death cases was the lowest in Brazil with 0.004 per thousand, and the highest in Spain with 0.525 per thousand coincidence with the highest case of confirmed cases 4.626 per thousand. The forecast models show an expected increase in the number of confirmed cases in Brazil in the next two months (Table 5).

 

We see when the occurrence of COVID-19 confirmed cases and deaths coincided at the same time, despite lower rates that leads to the epidemic explosion, which made the health system impotent, so the health system must be leading to the need re- reconstructed of the health system. The results of linear regression model for COVID-19 confirmed cases show that China has a weak correlation over time, and therefore it can be said that China has overcome the crisis as the correlation significant value is 0.2, Switzerland follows it as the correlation coefficient value is approximately 0.5, and then Germany and France, and Spain. While the number of confirmed cases in both the United States of America and Russia was increasing, as the value of the correlation coefficient is greater than 0.8.

 

As for mortality, we found that the correlation was significant for all the selected countries and rather close, except for China, which turned out to have already passed the crisis (R Squire= zero). The correlation significance also shows that France and Switzerland followed China (R Square = 0.39, 0.43 respectively). Which are heading towards exceeding the crisis by the value of the correlation significant, with a downward trend whereas the correlation for mortality in Russia although the same value, shows an upward trend in the escalating stages, and so is the case for the United States of America (R Square =0.53). The result of comparing the index among countries for precautionary measures shows that the correlation coefficients is very strong, and this indicates that the strength of the procedures did not differ greatly from one country to another. The result may be that China has weathered the crisis, and the results of the precautionary measures have clearly begun to show. This means the impact of the measures taken has not yet shown, its impact on reducing the confirmed cases rate, and confirmed deaths after. As for comparing index for precautionary measures with the number of confirmed cases and deaths for each country, we find that the relationship is still strong. The reason may be due to the delay in taking precautions, or not complying with the measure. These findings are in agreement with the Chinese study (Yichi et al)30. they believe that the emergency intervention measures adopted in the early stage of the epidemic, had a crucial restraining effect on the original spread of the epidemic. With respect to the forecast model worldwide, we find that the forecast confirmed cases model is a good model, while the forecast model that has been adopted for deaths cases worldwide is a fair model. By reviewing the number of recorded confirmed cases worldwide, we found this number to be within the 80% probability zone, while it was within the region 95% for deaths. The same applies to models of confirmed cases at the level of each country, most of which were within the forecast limits, except for models that were not valid, as in Italy and Turkey, as the models in those countries did not meet the requirement of invertibility and therefore the models are rejected.

 

The same applies to China with respect to the model of deaths, which may be the reason for that recognition of a number of recent deaths of 1290 cases, on 17 Apr 2020.

 

CONCLUSION:

We conclude that the health system must be reviewed, and these precautionary measures evaluated whether they are beneficial or more stringent conditions should be imposed.

 

LIMITATION:

The article assumed that the confirmed cases represent all cases in the country, whereas it is relevant to the number test performed.

 

The data should include the number of tests performed per day in each country.

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

Prof. Yousser Mohammad, Professor of Chest Diseases at Faculty of Medicine at Tishreen University in Syria.

 

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Received on 08.12.2020            Modified on 18.07.2021

Accepted on 28.10.2021           © RJPT All right reserved

Research J. Pharm.and Tech 2022; 15(3):1299-1306.

DOI: 10.52711/0974-360X.2022.00217