Exploring the Statistical Significance of Africa's COVID-19 Data

Abstract

It has been cited by different researchers that COVID-19 infections in Africa is insignificant. This paper delves into the regional data to scrutinize the statistical significance of COVID-19 in Africa. The data of all regions, according to World Health Organization (WHO) classification, is compared to that of Africa. The paper explores COVID-19 infections data including cases, fatality, case fatality rates, recovery, and recovery rates. These are compared to COVID-19 status in Africa on May 9, 2020. First, the COVID-19 regional data is taken through logarithmic transformation, normality tests and One-way ANOVA analysis of mean infections, fatality, case fatality rates, recoveries, and case recovery rates. Then Tukey post hoc method is used to identify which regions exhibit statistical difference in, cases, fatality, case fatality rates, recoveries, and case recovery rates. Estimation of linear models of various parameters with regions as factor is done. The residuals of the linear models are tested for normality using Q-Qplots, residual-fitted plots, and histograms. Lastly, 95% family-wise confidence level of regional mean differences in COVIFD-19 infections and resultant effects is estimated and plotted. In this paper selected countries in the East, West, and mid- west Mediterranean, and Oceania regions are referred to as OCEA. In the statistical analysis the regions are denoted as Americas (AMER), Europe (EURO), Africa (AFRO), and OCEA. Results indicate that the mean COVID-19 infection cases are significantly different from Americas, Europe, and OCEA at 95% confidence level. Also, the mean COVID-19 case fatality in Africa is significantly different from Europe and Americas but not OCEA. In addition, mean COVID-19 case fatality rate in Africa is not statistically different from Americas, Europe, and OCEA at 95% confidence level. Further, the mean COVID-19 recoveries in Africa is significantly different from Europe and OCEA but not Americas at 95% confidence level. Interestingly, all regional recovery rates are not significantly different from each other at 95% confidence level.