New Zealand is the best country to be in during the pandemic days, evident by its success in the fight against the coronavirus, as well as the vaccination rate, Bloomberg reported Monday.
Ranking top among 53 countries in accordance with the "Bloomberg resilience score," in which New Zealand scored 76.8%, the report stated that the island country is followed by Singapore and Australia, respectively.
Over the past month, New Zealand and Singapore recorded zero fatalities linked to COVID-19, which brought them at the top of the list. The two countries' total death per million is only five while their positive test rate is only 0.1%. When it comes to vaccination, New Zealand prevails as the country that is currently providing 247% access to COVID-19 vaccines, while Singapore offers 85%. Australia follows these two countries with a remarkable 0.2% fatality rate for a month and 36 deaths per million people. Australia also provides 230% access to COVID-19 vaccination, a percentage that is only being prevailed by the leader, New Zealand, and Canada which provides 330% access to vaccines. Despite these exceptional percentages when it comes to vaccination access, neither of these three countries has actually started vaccinating their people. Still, according to the report, as long as their COVID-19 cases remain low, their spots in the list seems difficult to beat by any other nation for now.
Bloomberg resilience score examines the world's top 53 economies to rank their success during the pandemic, measuring their disruption in social and economic fields. The list was initially introduced on Nov.24, 2020, and since then, it's being updated each month in accordance with the countries' progress in the fight against the coronavirus. New Zealand has been leading the list for the past three months straight.
Other countries that stand out in the list are Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which are leading the vaccination race as of now, providing 38.05 and 22.58 doses per 100 people, respectively, so far. With these doses, UAE is ranked 11th while Israel is ranked 15th, mostly because they have a large number of infected cases, despite measures against the outbreak.
Mexico took the wooden spoon in the list as it ranked 53rd, due to the fact that the fatalities in the country reached a record high, reporting more than 1,800 deaths daily.
Turkey, on the other hand, ranked 33rd, ranking 12 rows higher compared to the previous month, thanks to the remarkable drop in the number of cases, achieved through the constant weekend and nighttime curfews.
One of the most striking outcomes of the list, according to the report, is the fact that the major democratic powers, such as the U.S. and the U.K., is ranked relatively worse (32nd and 35th, respectively), their not so democratic counterparts, such as China and Vietnam (fifth and 10th, respectively). However, the report states that, unlike what appears on the surface, the democracies actually make most of the top 10 countries since the list was introduced first, back in November.
The report states that the key point when it comes to managing the pandemic is to inspire trust in your people, rather than oppress them. In fact, Bloomberg expresses that if a government can have a solid bond with its people and create feelings of trust, the countermeasures against the coronavirus led by the state may not even be necessary since the society would follow the instructions voluntarily.