SARS-CoV 2 (Covid 19) heterogeneous mortality rate across countries may be partly explained by life expectancy, calorie intake and prevalence of diabetes.

Abstract

SARS-CoV 2 continues to disproportionately kill people across the world. To understand the reasons for such heterogeneity, we isolated dietary and environmental factors that can either prime or suppress human immunity. We grouped phytochemical and micronutrient rich food (fruits, vegetable and spices) as immunity primers while smoking, alcohol consumption, pollution, high calorie intake and diabetes as immunity suppressing factors and determined correlations with Covid-19 death per million populations (C19DM) using multiple linear regressions or where necessary, best fit trend lines. We also determined correlations between life expectancy alone or in combination with other factors and C19DM. Based on the data, we found no evidence that immunity primers explain C19DM heterogeneity across countries. This observation did not change even after including immunity suppressing factors in the models. Of all the factors under study, life expectancy (years), calorie intake (Kcal/person/day) and prevalence of diabetes (%) had significant association with C19DM (R2 = 0.301, p < 0.000). Therefore, these three factors should be further explored when trying to understand Covid-19 disproportionate mortality across countries.