SINGAPORE, 7 May 2021: Six Asia Pacific countries consistently come out on top as the best for coping with the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a resilience ranking by Bloomberg that has been constantly updated since November.
According to the latest update, 26 April, Singapore topped the April ranking, followed by New Zealand and Australia.
Special mention was made of New Zealand and Australia that launched a travel bubble, the first of any note to allow quarantine-free travel between two nations.
Singapore is expected to replicate the bubble move with Hong Kong later this month. In April, Taiwan and Palau, a tiny Pacific island nation, introduced arguably the first travel bubble in the Asia Pacific.
Six APAC nations figured in the top eight countries out of a field of 53 nations studied. Both Finland and Norway were bumped off the top eight by the United Arab Emirates and Israel due to their successful vaccination campaigns.
Since vaccinations started at the beginning of the year, the index values assigned to the top-performing countries have risen across the board. The biggest jumps occurred in Israel, but also in South Korea, which suffered a Covid wave at the beginning of the year.
Ranked 17th, the US achieved significant gains in April – up from rank 34 in November. The UK ranked 18, up from 28 in November. The country ranked worst most consistently was Mexico, which came in last every month except April, when it rose to rank 48 ahead of Iran, Colombia, Argentina, Poland and Brazil.
The full scope of the new Indian outbreak did not reflect in the ranking yet, even though the country was downgraded to rank 30 from rank 20 in March from a high of 16 in February.
Thailand dropped four places in the ranking to 13th while Malaysia dropped two places to 20th. In contrast, Vietnam rose up the chart four places to the 11 slot.
(Source: Statista – Katharina Buchholz)
https://www.statista.com/chart/24762/bloomberg-covid-resilience-tracker/?ct=t(All_Camp_InfographTicker_Asia_PanAsia_00042)
For the full Bloomberg report: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-resilience-ranking/
