Comparisons of COVID-19 dynamics in the different countries of the World using Time-Series clustering

Abstract

AbstractIn recent months, the world has suffered from the appearance of a new strain of coronavirus, causing the COVID-19 pandemic. There are great scientific efforts to find new treatments and vaccines, at the same time that governments, companies, and individuals have taken a series of actions in response to this pandemic. These efforts seek to decrease the speed of propagation, although with significant social and economic costs. Countries have taken different actions, also with different results. In this article we use non-parametric techniques (HT and MST) with the aim of identifying groups of countries with a similar spread of the coronavirus. The variable of interest is the number of daily infections per country. Results show that there are groups of countries with differentiated contagion dynamics, both in the number of contagions plus at the time of the greatest transmission of the disease. It is concluded that the actions taken by the countries, the speed at which they were taken and the number of tests carried out may explain part of the differences in the dynamics of contagion.