Abstract

Infections and deaths associated with COVID-19 show a high degree of heterogeneity across different populations. A thorough understanding of population-level predictors of such outcomes is crucial for devising better-targeted and more appropriate public health preparedness measures. While demographic, economic, and health-system capacity have featured prominently in recent work, cultural, and behavioral characteristics have largely been overlooked. However, cultural differences shape both the public policy response and individuals' behavioral responses to the crisis in ways that can impact infection dynamics and key health outcomes. To address this gap, we used meta-analytic methods to explore the global variability of three public health outcomes during the first wave of the pandemic. This set of analyses identified several cultural/behavioral attributes as independent predictors of public health outcomes after adjusting for key demographic, political, economic, and health-system-related predictors; which were robust in sensitivity analyses. In conclusion, this study clearly demonstrates that cultural attributes do in fact account for some of the global disparities in COVID-19-attributed health outcomes. As a consequence, policymakers should more explicitly consider a society's cultural attributes alongside other important parameters such as demographic characteristics and health system constraints in order to develop better tailored and more effective policy responses.