Testing for COVID-19 in Vietnam (Photo: VNA)Researchers at thethink-tank collected data from various countries and territories to create aninteractive to gauge the relative performance at different points in thepandemic. Figures were calculated for the following indicators of confirmedcases, rates of death and test.
New Zealand topped therankings, followed by Vietnam, Taiwan (China) and Thailand.
On the other hand,developed nations like the US, the UK and France and countries with a largerpopulation were classified as worst-performing. The UK came at the 94th place amongalmost 100 surveyed countries and territories while Indonesia and India ranked85th and 86th, respectively.
The report pointed outthat smaller countries (with populations of fewer than 10 million people)proved more agile than the majority of their larger counterparts in handlingthe health emergency for most of 2020. Cyrus, Rwanda, Iceland and Latvia wereall in the top 10.
“In general, countrieswith smaller populations, cohesive societies, and capable institutions have acomparative advantage in dealing with a global crisis such as a pandemic,”according to the report.
The relatively‘low-tech’ nature of the health measures used to mitigate the spread of thevirus to date, including large-scale lockdowns, may have created a more levelplaying field between developed and developing countries in the management ofCOVID-19.
Despite this, theuneven deployment of the first vaccines against COVID-19 could give richercountries a decisive upper hand in crisis recovery efforts, and leave poorercountries fighting against the pandemic for longer, it warned./.
VNA
