One Health & Risk Management (Oct 2024)
Analysis of infections, recoveries and deaths from COVID-19 in rivers state, Nigeria
Abstract
Introduction: While some patients recovered, others died across the world thereby losing their loved ones. The objective of the current study is to determine statistical differences in means of the COVID-19 infected population (laboratory confirmed), discharged cases(recovered) and deaths resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic in Rivers State, Nigeria. Material and Methods: In this study, extraction of the infected population (laboratory confirmed), discharged cases, and deaths from COVID-19 was carried out from data obtained from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control which covered 572 days (25th March 2020 - 17th October 2021). The test for the significance of means among the variables was done using a one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) followed by the Tukey HSD test. The two variables whose means do not significantly differ were tested for strength of relationship and dependence using correlation analysis and cubic polynomial function respectively. Results: Results showed that there is a statistically significant difference between the infected population, discharged cases, and deaths from COVID-19 as obtained from one-way ANOVA (F(2, 1710) = 121.958, p = 0.000). Use of the Tukey HSD test indicated that the means of infected population and discharged cases do not differ from each other (p>0.01); however, mean deaths from COVID-19 significantly differ from others at 99% confidence intervals (p<0.01). There was a weak positive relationship between deaths due to COVID-19 and the other two groups (r=0.360, n=571, p=0.000). However, a moderate positive correlation existed between COVID-19 COVID-19-infected population and the discharged population (r=0. 566, n=571, p=0.000) at a 99% confidence interval. Conclusions: The mean of deaths from the study population was significantly different from the means from both the infected population and discharged (recovered) cases. This implies that only a few people died from COVID-19 in Rivers State Nigeria when compared to those who got infected and recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic.
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