1 INTRODUCTION
There are pieces of evidence indicating that the pandemic- and epidemic-
related mortalities can vary considerably among different countries and
populations. Genetic profile, age, sex, and immunological signature are
among the essential factors that affect mortality rate in a disease
outbreak (Luk, Gross, & Thompson, 2001;
Shanks, Wilson, Kippen, & Brundage,
2018; Wu et al., 2018). Such a variation
also occurs in the demographically similar groups in which measures of
the health systems, type of the quarantine approach, thoroughness of
enforcement (Crosby, 2003;
Dennis Shanks et al., 2010;
McLeod et al., 2008;
Shanks et al., 2018), as well as social
and economic contexts of a particular society
(Curtis, 2004) are the critical
determinants of the mortality rate. In any pandemic and epidemic,
knowing about these determinants can help to take a more efficient
control of the disease and reduce the unwanted disease burden; this is
more critical in the case of new emerging pandemics and epidemics such
as the recently emerged COVID-19.
From the first report of infection on December 31, 2019 in Wuhan City,
Hubei province in China until the time of this writing (April 25, 2020),
210 countries and territories around the world and two international
conveyances are affected by the Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Earlier on
March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that the
new COVID-19 is the latest pandemic of the world
(Cucinotta & Vanelli, 2020;
Stoffel et al., 2020). Until now, based
on the first published reports on the epidemiological factors and
mortality rates of the COVID-19 outbreak, it is evident that, like many
other pandemics, the COVID-19 mortality also varies noticeably among
different nations around the world (Grech,
2020; Lai et al., 2020;
Q. Ruan, Yang, Wang, Jiang, & Song,
2020; Shojaee et al., 2020;
Sun, Qiu, Huang, & Yang, 2020). As a
noteworthy variation, we can mention the difference in the total
confirmed death rate between the U.S., some European countries (e.g.,
Italy, Spain, France, and the U.K.), and the Middle East.
The Middle East, known as an oil-rich region, consists of about 17
countries located at the confluence of three continents (i.e., Asia,
Africa, and Europe). This region has its specific cultural behavior and
economic context, quite different from the U.S. and the Europian
countries. Most of the people living in this region are Muslim, although
Jew and Christians have also a noticeable population. Ethnic diversity
is another noticeable catachrestic of this region, as well, where Arabs,
Persians, Turks, and Kurds are the most populous inhabitants. Talking
about these differences is not the topic of this writing, although some
details can be found in the following references
(Badr, Abdallah, & Mahmoud, 2005;
Inhorn, Birenbaum-Carmeli, Tremayne, &
Gürtin, 2017; Latzman et al., 2015;
Madadin, 2015;
Ourfali, 2015;
Van Horne, Belkacem, & Al Fusail, 2013).
As stated before, all these differences can affect the epidemiological
features of any outbreak. Hence, it seems that in the new emerging
COVID-19 pandemic, a comparison of the disease-related mortality rate
between the Middle East region and the top ten most affected countries
(the U.S., Spain, Italy, France, Germany, the U.K., Turkey, Iran, China,
and Russia) can provide some helpful information. Moreover, it is deemed
that the new pandemic has the potential to affect the geopolitical
dynamics, which, in the case of the Middle East, is of a global concern
(Woertz, 2020). At the time of this
writing (April 25, 2020), Iran and Turkey were the only Middle East
countries that were placed in the top ten most affected list. With this
introduction, in the present study, we aimed to compare the COVID-19
mortality rates between the Middle East and top ten most affected
countries using mortality-related epidemiolocal terms along with a
comprehensive literature analysis.