Q Why is it in News?
India has been ranked 86th in a “Covid-19 Performance Index” comprising 98 countries.
Q What is Covid-19 Performance Index?
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 are the parameters used in this index?
Following Six Indicators are used: Confirmed cases, confirmed deaths, cases per million people, deaths per million people, cases as a proportion of tests, and tests per thousand people.
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 findings of this Index?
Top Countries:
New Zealand topped the rankings closely followed by Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand and Cyprus.
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.
Performance of India:
India ranked 86th 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 does this Trend Analysis shows us?
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.