Covid–19 Performance Index

Q. Why is this in news?

• India has recently been ranked 86^th in a “Covid-19 Performance Index” comprising 98 countries.

Q. What about the Index? 

• Institution Involved:
  
  • Covid-19 Performance Index was compiled by the Sydney-based Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank, which sought to measure the response of countries to the Pandemic.
    
    • The Institute also took into account the impact of geography, political systems and economic development in assessing outcomes.

Q. What is the parameter used? 

• Six Indicators: Confirmed cases, confirmed deaths, cases per million people, deaths per million people, cases as a proportion of tests, and tests per thousand people.
• Fewer reported cases and deaths, both in aggregate and per capita terms, point towards a better response to the virus.
• More tests conducted on a per capita basis reveal an accurate picture of the extent of the pandemic at the national level.
• Lower rates of positive tests indicate greater degrees of control over the transmission of Covid-19.

Q. What is the assessing method?

• Assessed 98 countries in the 36 weeks that followed their hundredth case.
  
  • China was not included in the study because all of its testing rates are not publicly available.
• An average across six indicators was calculated for individual countries in each period and normalised to produce a score from 0 (worst performing) to 100 (best performing).

Q. What are the results of the survey?

• Top Countries:
  
  • New Zealand topped the rankings closely followed by Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand and Cyprus.

Q. Which are the bottom countries? 

• Brazil stood at the bottom of the index. The USA was the fifth-worst performing country, it stood at 94 out of 98 countries.

South Asian Countries:

• Sri Lanka was the best performing nation in South Asia, ranking 10, while the Maldives was at 25, Pakistan at 69, Nepal at 70, and Bangladesh at 84.

Q. What is the performance of India?

• India ranked 86^th in the Covid-19 Performance Index out of 98 countries.
• At 24.3, India’s average was lower than the region it belongs to — Asia-Pacific — which scored 58.2 and ranked best in the region-wise evaluation.

Q. What is the broad trend analysis?

• Smaller countries performed better: In general, countries with smaller populations, cohesive societies, and capable institutions have a comparative advantage in dealing with a global crisis such as a pandemic.
  
  
  • Smaller countries with fewer than 10 million people consistently outperformed their larger counterparts throughout 2020.

Leadership Mattered: Levels of economic development and differences in political systems didn’t have as much of an impact on coronavirus response as expected.

• Proper management of the pandemic was not much dependent on the regime type but whether citizens trust their leaders, and whether those leaders preside over a competent and effective state.

The relatively ‘low-tech’ nature of the health measures used to mitigate the spread of the virus created a more level playing field between developed and developing countries.

• The deployment of vaccines, however, could give richer countries an advantage.