A reflection on explanatory factors for COVID-19: A comparative study between countries

The COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest problem facing the world nowadays. Each country in the world has its own characteristics, which means that its governments, at different rhythms, adopt identical measures to combat this new virus. This article aims to perform a comparative study between countries with a population similar to the Portuguese in number of inhabitants and to find out which factors may explain the numbers registered with the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that the countries that carried out more population tests have higher values in tourism, security, innovation, competitiveness, and GDP per capita indicators. There is a significant and positive relationship between temperature and the daily cases of COVID-19 infections. The results found contribute to a greater knowledge of the behavior of this disease according to the characteristics of each country, making it useful for international business managers to compare and contrast different country environmental conditions in order to define alternative strategies to overcome this great period of disturbance more quickly.