COVID-19 deaths by population density

There is a correlation between population density and COVID-19 deaths per million population. But India, Netherlands and Germany are clear outliers - why? 

Size of bubbles is proportional to total number of COVID-19 deaths.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, some countries have suffered far worse than others in terms of mortality from the disease. While the high absolute death rates from the USA, UK, Italy and Spain have made a lot of headlines, these figures don’t take into account the different populations of the respective nations.

Since the spread of a virus is closely linked to the number of contacts people have, we would expect population density to be a significant factor in deaths from COVID-19. The bubble plot above shows that there is indeed a correlation between population density and deaths per population.

However, amongst countries with the highest number of deaths globally, India, Germany and the Netherlands are outliers from this correlation. These countries have high population densities, but relatively low numbers of deaths per population. India is particularly striking in this regard, having just 10 deaths per 1 million people despite one of the highest population densities. The reasons for this are still unclear.