COVID-19 impact on Socio-economic and Health Interventions: A Gaps and Peaks analysis using Clustering Approach

ABSTRACT

A quantifiable model to describe the peaks and gaps during the several waves of COVID-19 is generated and applied to the progression of 120 countries. The number of waves encountered and how many more to be encountered is a question which is currently explored by all the scientific communities. In the same quest, an attempt has been made to quantitatively model the peaks and the gaps within them which have been encountered by 120 most affected countries from February 2020 - December 2021. These 120 countries were ranked based on the number of confirmed cases and deaths recorded during this period. This study further cluster these countries based on socio-economic and health interventions to find an association with three dependent features of COVID-19 i.e. number of confirmed cases, deaths and death-infectivity rate. The findings in this study suggests that, every wave had multiple peaks within them and as the number of peaks increased, predicting their growth rate or decline rate turns to be extremely difficult. However, considering the clusters which share the common features even with diverse countries, there is some possibility to predict what might be coming next. This study involves exhaustive analysis of reliable data which are available in open access and marks an important aspect to the COVID-19 research communities.