Abstract

The article analyses the factors determining the level of vulnerability of regions to the influence of pandemic threats. Statistical indicators for 2021-2022 regarding the course of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ukraine were taken for analysis, namely the number of infected persons and the number of deaths per thousand of the population. Indicators in the field of healthy behaviour of the population were adopted as variable determinants (namely, the amount of healthy food consumption, sugar consumption, the number of people engaged in physical culture and sports, the number of smoking people and the proportion of obese people), for which a quantitative statistical base is available exhaustively for all 24 regions of the country. The study aims to confirm or refute the hypothesis regarding the existence of a connection between the regional behavioural patterns of the population in the health field and the region’s vulnerability to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the analysis, discriminant and canonical analyses were used, which were carried out in the STATISTICA software environment. Empirical indicators made it possible to confirm the hypothesis regarding a connection between regional behavioural patterns and the region’s level in terms of the number of deaths from COVID-19. The hypothesis about a possible dependence between behavioural patterns and the number of infected with COVID-19 was not confirmed – the discrimination model was statistically insignificant. This suggests that establishing dependencies requires more input parameters to describe the model. It was determined that the consumption of healthy foods (milk, berries, fish) influences the mortality rate from COVID-19 (high, medium or low). Also, indicators with a high degree of influence include the number of people engaged in physical culture and sports, and the proportion of people with obesity. The results of the study will be useful in the development of regional and national strategies to promote the formation of the resilience of territories to pandemic threats and in the selection of tools for working with the population within the framework of informational and educational campaigns for prevention of severe courses of diseases caused by epidemic factors.

Keywords: medical and social security of the population, pandemic, regional system stability, statistics of COVID-19, threats to public health.

JEL Classification: C12, I12, O18.

Cite as: Letunovska, N., & Boliukh, V. (2023). Countries’ Vulnerability to COVID-19 Depending on the Health Behaviour Patterns of the Population. Health Economics and Management Review, 4(1), 103-112. https://doi.org/10.21272/hem.2023.1-10

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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