The main limitation of the study is the number of factors that are analyzed throughout the study. As shown above, there could be multiple factors affecting the incidence and mortality rates of COVID-19, which makes it imperative to study other factors affecting the disease. This might explain the disappearance of the significance of the correlations when analyzing the correlations from a generalized standpoint to a stratified standpoint.
Further studies analyzing other factors that affect the incidence and mortality rates of COVID-19 globally and locally must be done in order to help governments and communities adapt to this current pandemic by improving the aspects that are the most associated with the decrease of COVID-19 incidence and mortality rates.
Conclusion
While the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the world economy, it is not known the extent of the relationship between COVID-19 incidence and mortality rates of countries and their GDP and GDP per capita. Datasets from WHO and the World Bank have been used in order to collect the data in order to perform the analysis. By finding the correlation of COVID-19 incidence and mortality rates to GDP and GDP per capita of all of the countries, it has been found that there is a strong correlation between GDP per capita and incidence rate. Other significant relationships had been found in other correlation pairs in the generalized analysis. However, these relationships mostly go away when the data are stratified, which suggests that a confounding variable is involved within this relationship. Future research that isolates that variable will be helpful for governments in dealing with the current COVID-19 pandemic and preparing their infrastructures in future pandemics as well.