Environmental and Economic Factors Affecting COVID-19 Infection in 175 Countries

This study explores a potential correlation between environmental and economic factors and the confirmed COVID-19 cases. This article uses official infection rate data and environmental and economic factors that may help accelerate transmissions, such as temperature, humidity, and GDP. Using statistical methods, i.e., ordinary least squares and quantile regression, our findings indicate that temperature, moisture, and island condition were the most influential explanatory variables. Nevertheless, the other factors, which are population density of a country, GDP, and country’s regime, are not statistically significant, indicating that those factors do not significantly explain changes in the confirmed COVID-19 cases.