By late January 2020, the 2019 novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) had reached Europe and most European countries had registered cases by March 1. However, the spread of the virus has been uneven in both prevalence and speed of propagation. We analyse the association of social, economic, and demographic factors in the initial spread of the coronavirus disease COVID-19 across 23 European countries between March 1 and April 30, 2020. Diagnosed COVID-19 cases from Johns Hopkins University and data from the European Social Survey and other sources were used to estimate bivariate associations between cumulative reported case numbers at ten-day intervals and nine social, demographic, and economic variables. To avoid overfitting, we first reduce these variables to three factors by factor analysis before conducting a multiple regression analysis. We also perform a sensitivity analysis using rates and new cases between two time periods. Results showed that social and economic factors are strongly and positively associated with COVID-19 throughout the studied period, while the association with population density and cultural factors was initially low, but by April, was higher than the earlier mentioned factors. For future influenza-like pandemics, implementing strict movement restrictions from early on will be crucial to curb the spread of such diseases in economically, socially, and culturally vibrant and densely populated countries.

截至 2020 年 1 月下旬，2019 年新型冠状病毒 (SARS-CoV-2) 已抵达欧洲，截至 3 月 1 日，大多数欧洲国家均已登记病例。然而，该病毒的传播在流行率和传播速度方面并不均衡。我们分析了 2020 年 3 月 1 日至 4 月 30 日期间，社会、经济和人口因素与冠状病毒病 COVID-19 在 23 个欧洲国家的最初传播之间的关联。来自约翰·霍普金斯大学的 COVID-19 确诊病例和来自欧洲的数据社会调查和其他来源用于估计以十天为间隔的累积报告病例数与九个社会、人口和经济变量之间的双变量关联。为了避免过度拟合，我们首先通过因子分析将这些变量减少到三个因素，然后再进行多元回归分析。我们还使用两个时间段之间的比率和新病例进行敏感性分析。结果显示，在整个研究期间，社会和经济因素与 COVID-19 呈强烈正相关，而与人口密度和文化因素的相关性最初较低，但到 4 月份，已高于前面提到的因素。对于未来的流感类大流行，尽早实施严格的行动限制对于遏制此类疾病在经济、社会和文化活跃且人口稠密的国家的传播至关重要。