correlation between lifestyle factors and covid-19 indices: an ecological study

Background: coronavirus disease of 2019 (covid-19) became a public health threat to global public health in late 2019. this study aimed to investigate the correlation between lifestyle factors and the covid-19 epidemiological indicators, including cumulative incidence rate, the cumulative rate of death, recovery rate, and case fatality rate.methods: in this ecological study, aggregate data were used. information about covid-19 for each country was retrieved from https://www.worldometers.info/ from the date of the first report until november 30th, 2020. the information on the prevalence of smoking, alcohol consumption, and obesity in 2019 was collected from https://www.indexmundi.com/. moreover, the information on the prevalence of physical inactivity was obtained from the who website. we drew scatter plots of lifestyle factors based on covid-19 indices.results: results showed that the cumulative incidence rate and cumulative rate of death had significant direct correlations with the prevalence of obesity, physical inactivity, smoking, and alcohol consumption (p<0.05). this means that the countries with a high prevalence of obesity, physical inactivity, smoking, and alcohol consumption had increased indicators such as the cumulative incidence rate and cumulative rate of death (p<0.05). there were also significant inverse correlations between the recovery rate and the prevalence of smoking and alcohol consumption (p<0.05).conclusion: there are significant correlations between the cumulative incidence rate, the cumulative rate of death, and the recovery rate of covid-19 with unhealthy lifestyle behaviors. therefore, it is necessary to develop lifestyle modification strategies that can lead to reduction of the morbidity and mortality of this disease.