Dear Director,
In the original brief Gasto sanitario público y mortalidad por COVID-19 en España y en Europa [Public healthcare expenditure and COVID-19 mortality in Spain and in Europe],1 the authors conclude that the association between “low” public healthcare expenditure and poor outcomes in Spain in the COVID-19 crisis are not supported by the available evidence. However, when conducting their analysis, they did not adjust for other variables (such as population density, percentage of individuals older than 65 years of age, disease burden, or social class) which do appear in other works in their bibliography.2, 3 If these variables had been included in their analysis, the conclusions would probably have been different.
Footnotes
Please cite this article as: Velasco Montes J, González Díez S, Rivas Cilleros E. Sobre el gasto sanitario público y mortalidad por COVID-19 en España y en Europa. Rev Clin Esp. 2022;222:56.
References
- 1.Elola-Somoza F.J., Bas-Villalobos M.C., Pérez-Villacastín J., Macaya-Miguel C. Gasto sanitario público y mortalidad por COVID-19 en España y en Europa. Rev Clin Esp. 2021;221:400–403. doi: 10.1016/j.rce.2020.11.003. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 2.Khan J.R., Awan N., Islam M.M., Muurlink O. Healthcare capacity, health expenditure, and civil society as predictors of COVID-19 case fatalities: a global analysis. Front Public Health. 2020;8:347. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2020.00347. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 3.Medeiros de Figueiredo A., Daponte A., Moreira-Marculino de Figueiredo D.C., Gil-García E., Kalache A. Letalidad del COVID-19: ausencia de patrón epidemiológico. Gac Sanit. 2021;35:355–357. doi: 10.1016/j.gaceta.2020.04.001. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]