COVID-19 Performance Index – Highlights

An Australian think-tank has recently released a COVID-19 “performance index”. As per an index, New Zealand has the best-performing country against COVID-19.

Key Points

• The COVID-19 Performance Index has been released by the Lowy Institute.
• The index has been prepared on the basis of 6 indicators- confirmed cases, cases per million people, confirmed deaths, deaths per million people, tests per thousand people, and cases as a proportion of tests.
• The index accessed the relative COVID-19 performance of 98 countries.
• As per the think tank, a country having fewer cases and deaths, both in aggregate and per capita terms, has a better response to COVID-19.
• Lower rates of positive tests indicate control on the transmission of coronavirus.
• New Zealand has topped the index and Vietnam has been ranked 2nd. They are followed by Taiwan, Thailand, and Cyprus on the 3rd, 4th and 5th rank respectively.
• India has been ranked 86th on the index while the United States has been placed at 94th position.
• Talking about neighboring countries of India, Sri Lanka has been ranked 10th, the Maldives at 25th, Nepal at 70th, Pakistan at 69th, and Bangladesh at 84th.
• The country which has been placed at the bottom of the index, i.e., at 98th rank is Brazil.

The index did not include China as no proper data was available on the testing of the country.