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COVID-19: A Relook at Healthcare Systems and Aged Populations

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  • Thanh-Long Giang

    (Faculty of Economics, National Economics University (NEU), Hanoi 11616, Vietnam
    IPAG Lab, IPAG Business School, 75006 Paris, France)

  • Dinh-Tri Vo

    (IPAG Lab, IPAG Business School, 75006 Paris, France
    School of Finance, University of Economics Hochiminh City (UEH), Ho Chi Minh City 724000, Vietnam)

  • Quan-Hoang Vuong

    (Centre for Interdisciplinary Social Research, Phenikaa University, Hanoi 100803, Vietnam
    Centre Emile Bernheim, Université Libre de Bruxelles, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium)

Abstract

Using data from the WHO’s Situation Report on the COVID-19 pandemic from 21 January 2020 to 30 March 2020 along with other health, demographic, and macroeconomic indicators from the WHO’s Application Programming Interface and the World Bank’s Development Indicators, this paper explores the death rates of infected persons and their possible associated factors. Through the panel analysis, we found consistent results that healthcare system conditions, particularly the number of hospital beds and medical staff, have played extremely important roles in reducing death rates of COVID-19 infected persons. In addition, both the mortality rates due to different non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and rate of people aged 65 and over were significantly related to the death rates. We also found that controlling international and domestic travelling by air along with increasingly popular anti-COVID-19 actions (i.e., quarantine and social distancing) would help reduce the death rates in all countries. We conducted tests for robustness and found that the Driscoll and Kraay (1998) method was the most suitable estimator with a finite sample, which helped confirm the robustness of our estimations. Based on the findings, we suggest that preparedness of healthcare systems for aged populations need more attentions from the public and politicians, regardless of income level, when facing COVID-19-like pandemics.

Suggested Citation

  • Thanh-Long Giang & Dinh-Tri Vo & Quan-Hoang Vuong, 2020. "COVID-19: A Relook at Healthcare Systems and Aged Populations," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(10), pages 1-10, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:10:p:4200-:d:360732
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    References listed on IDEAS

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