Dödligt virus från Kina orsakar panik (SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19)

The 21 countries in the analysis were Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Denmark, England and Wales, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

The research team were able to use their findings to group the countries in the study into four categories, depending on each country’s overall death toll during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first group were those that avoided a detectable rise in deaths, and included Bulgaria, New Zealand, Slovakia, Australia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Norway, Denmark and Finland.

The second and third groups of countries experienced a low to medium impact of the pandemic. The low impact group included Austria, Switzerland and Portugal, while the medium impact group included France, the Netherlands and Sweden. The fourth group, which experienced the highest number of deaths from any disease during the study period, consisted of Belgium, Italy, Scotland, Spain and England and Wales.