Statistical analysis and data visualization of Indonesia and Malaysia SARS Cov-2 metadata

SARS CoV-2 is a fascinating topic to investigate, especially in Indonesia and Malaysia, which share similar racial demographics. However, statistical analysis of information on the SARS CoV-2 from a database, especially GISAID, does not contain specific customizations related to virus comparisons between selected countries. Therefore, the researchers conducted statistical analysis and data visualization using the Python programming language to describe and investigate SARS CoV-2 Indonesia and Malaysia from the GISAID database. SARS CoV-2 metadata from Indonesia (N=117) and Malaysia (N=250), which were gathered during 2020, were compared. This comparison was aimed to investigate the discrepancies of COVID-19 cases in closely related populations. Firstly, data visualization was conducted using the Python Matplotlib library to create bar charts for clades and mutation comparison. Additionally, a series of boxplots were generated to show age discrepancies stratified by gender. Furthermore, the statistical tests showed that only the dominant Malaysian (G and O) clades were found to be significantly different compared to Indonesian cases (p-value=0.016). The proportion of two major mutations (G614D and NSP12 P323L) were also significantly different in the two countries caused by the dominant clade differences (p-value=0.007). Lastly, the differences in the age distribution of COVID-19 cases between the two countries were significant only in the male group (p-value=0.017).