Role of the Health System in Combating Covid-19: Cross-Section Analysis and Artificial Neural Network Simulation for 124 Country Cases

Abstract

In the fight against Covid-19, developed countries and developing countriesdiverge in success. This drew attention to the discussion of how differenthealth systems and different levels of health spending are effective in combatingCovid-19. In this study, the role of the health system in the fightagainst Covid-19 is discussed. In this context, the number of hospital beds,the number of doctors, life expectancy at 60, universal health service and theshare of health expenditures in GDP were used as health indicators. In thestudy, firstly 2020 data was estimated by using the Artificial Neural Networkssimulation method and this year was used in the analysis. The model, withthe data of 124 countries, was estimated using the cross-sectional OLSregression method. The estimation results show that the number of hospitalbeds, number of doctors and life expectancy at the age of 60 have statisticallysignificant and positive effects on the ratio of Covid-19 recovered/cases.Universal health service and share of health expenditures in GDP are notsignificant statistically on the cases and recovered. Hospital bed capacity isthe most effective variable on the recovered/case ratio.