New Zealand is no longer at the forefront of epidemic management, while Belgium is still at the bottom

Press Company Bloomberg Holds a rankingBest placesDuring corona infections. Although New Zealand has consistently topped the list since the crisis began, it has now been ousted.

Bloomberg’s rankings are based on health and economic criteria, as well as the quality of life of residents in each country (see all indicators below this article).

Considered a model country since the onset of the epidemic, New Zealand is not a global reference in the fight against the corona virus. This is due to the very slow vaccination campaign, which means that the vaccination rate in the country is only 1.9 percent.

Still, we don’t have to worry about the New Zealanders, they are still in second place. The country made international headlines last weekend with a concert attended by 50,000 people without masks at Eden Park in Auckland. It has been the most attended music event in the world since the onset of the epidemic.

Singapore is the new number one in the world

Now New Zealand has been removed by Singapore. Like New Zealand, the South Asian city-state has the lowest virus circulation in its territory. But Singapore owes its first place to its vaccine campaign. With one in five being vaccinated, the island government is doing much better than New Zealand.

However, Singapore has a much higher ‘control score’ than New Zealand. In other words: actions are drastic. Even if shops, restaurants and bars are open, customers have to register with the government monitoring system every time. In addition, except for children under the age of six, wearing a mouth mask in general is still mandatory.

Australia ranks third in the rankings.

According to Bloomberg, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia have returned to “pre-epidemic life”, avoiding international travel. It should be noted, however, that residents of New Zealand and Australia can again travel freely between the two countries without being isolated by the recently introduced ‘travel bubble’. Singapore plans to do the same with Hong Kong by the end of May and is in talks with Australia to introduce a similar measure.

Finland, the best student in Europe

Other top countries include Israel (4th), which has the highest vaccination rate in the world among countries with a population of more than one million out of 57 million. For weeks, the Israeli government has been gradually reducing its corona operations. Infection rates and deaths have been falling sharply, with no deaths for two days in a row last week.

Finland is the leading European country in the rankings, ranking 9th.

The United States and the United Kingdom are ranked 17th and 18th globally, respectively, in the rankings of countries with the best performance in vaccination. Both countries, which were badly affected by the corona virus before the advent of vaccines, have made a strong return to the rankings in recent months.

Belgium behind India

Belgium is ranked 31st out of 53 countries on the list. It is ahead of the Netherlands (33rd) and France (41st), but lags behind India (30th). However, the latter country is currently at the speed of the worst corona waves since the onset of the epidemic.

India has even better health statistics than Belgium (more than 1.3 billion) because most of the health indicators used by Bloomberg are related to the total population of each country. India is expected to sink to the bottom of the Bloomberg list in the coming weeks.

India is grateful for its exceptional economic data. For this criterion, Bloomberg uses the annual change in the GDP forecast for 2021. In India, it is estimated at 11 per cent, the highest number among the 53 countries currently ranked. By comparison: in Belgium it is only 4 percent.

The 10 criteria that Bloomberg uses to create rankings are:

• The number of cases of Covit-19 detected per 100,000 people in the last month
• Mortality rate from corona in the last month
• Death toll from Govt-19 per 1 million residents
• Positiviteitsratio
• Vaccination rate (number of doses administered and type of vaccine)
• Intensity of locking
• Social movement
• The annual change in GDP for 2021 is estimated
• Access to health
• Human Development Index (Quality of Life)

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