Our study examines the mediating role of key socio-economic factors in the spread of COVID-19 pandemic from a global perspective to explain the asym- metry in the distribution of the burdens and responses across countries. We use Covid-19 global data to estimate an ’analysis of covariance model’ to study the correlations between temperature, income, and size of the country, and if planned economies have managed the crises better. We find that spread of virus transmis- sion has a positive correlation with a country’s income and an inverse relationship with temperature, and population (size). The performance of high-income coun- tries on the parameter total tests as a ratio of total cases’ is inadequate. In contrast, the performance of low-income countries on the parameter total recovered as a ratio of total cases’ is weak.