Looking for a little normalcy after a year of pandemic weirdness? New Zealand, Singapore and Australia are the places to be.
Those three places ranked highest in the latest Bloomberg Covid Resilience Ranking, which measures where the pandemic is being handled most effectively.
Bloomberg started the index in November. In the latest ranking of 53 nations, Israel surged, moving up nine slots to No. 5. Bloomberg credits the nation’s rapid vaccination effort for its rise.
The U.S. just barely missed the top 20, rising six spots to No. 21. As Bloomberg reports:
“The U.S. is a key example of the positive cycle that fast vaccination creates: cases dropped to the lowest level since early October this month and deaths have fallen too, leading some areas to ease mask mandates and reopen schools, restaurants and cinemas.”
On the other hand, many of the countries of Europe — where infection rates recently have jumped — took a big fall in the rankings, recording nine of the 10 biggest declines during March. Bloomberg says Europe is “paying the price for a chaotic vaccine rollout.”
Bloomberg’s rankings attempt to gauge which countries are effectively managing the pandemic “with the least social and economic disruption — from mortality rates and testing to vaccine access and freedom of movement.”
Overall, economies in the Asia-Pacific region dominate the “pantheon of Covid success stories,” Bloomberg says. The publication adds that in many of the best-performing countries, “entry is tightly policed to keep the coronavirus out.”
The top 10 in the index as of March 24 — and their Bloomberg Resilience Scores — are:
- New Zealand: 78
- Singapore: 76.6
- Australia: 73.9
- Taiwan: 73.5
- Israel: 71.4
- South Korea: 69.7
- China: 68.4
- Japan: 68
- Thailand: 67
- Norway: 66.6
The U.S. earned a score of 59.9 this time around.
Nations in Latin America and Africa cluster together in the lowest spots of the 53-nation rankings, while Mexico remains in last place, where it has been since the list began. Mexico’s latest resilience score is 37.4.
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