Analysis of Coronavirus Outbreak in the Middle East

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Highlights

1. Iran and Turkey are the two hardest-hit countries in the Middle East. While Iran experienced the first major outbreak in the Middle East, Turkey has recently eclipsed Iran in total number of cases. Since these two countries have similar population sizes (80M+/-), the prima facie stats are comparable. Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE and Qatar are also faced with sizeable caseloads.

2. Turkey has been doing a much better job than Iran in testing, thus keeping the death tolls well under the current worldwide average of 7.0%. Egypt and Iran have the highest death rates in Middle East. The economically advanced nations, including Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, Qatar, Bahrain, etc., have managed to maintain very low death rates.

3. Since the recovery rate is highly correlated with the timing of the surge, Iran demonstrates a higher recovery rate than that of Turkey. Israel's advanced medical system has helped them maintain a high recovery rate as well. Of course, one must accept Iran's recovery stats, like China's, with a grain of salt.

4. From the very first case, the UAE has been extremely proactive in testing, extending it to the asymptomatic population as well. In fact, the UAE, with a similar population size as that of Israel (9M+/-), has remained well ahead of Israel in testing, while Saudi Arabia has been lagging far behind its economically-advanced neighbors. Considering that Saudi Arabia is the home to Mecca and Medina, it has to deal with a very different set of logistics (e.g., Hajj) than its neighbors.

5. With a large population (100M+/-) the wild card right now is Egypt. The good news is, it had a late surge so it's not confronted with a zero-base model; it can borrow the knowledge-base from Iran and Turkey, especially in testing so it can meaningfully leverage its limited resources.

Stay safe!

Data Source:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

-Sid Som
homequant@gmail.com