The analysis of the effect of COVID-19 on the innovation capability of the countries to make high-tech exports in Europe

This study aims to investigate whether the COVID-19 pandemic has breaking points in cases, deaths and vaccinations, as well as whether the pandemic has caused a contraction in the innovation capability of high-tech exporting countries. The test results show that there is a highly positive correlation of 0.842 between normalised European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) index scores and normalised high-tech exports. The convergence is not high in high-tech exports and innovation capability in EIS countries. It seems that there is divergence for high-tech exports and innovation capability in EU countries. There is a technology creation gap between the member countries. In the manuscript, the breakpoints of COVID-19-related cases, deaths, vaccination and normalised EIS scores and high-tech exports in the country set were analysed and the statistical test results showed that all of the five data series have different results, and it is clear that vaccination has reversed the negative process.