Stephen Dziedzic …. the foreign affairs reporter ABC with this title “New Zealand tops Lowy Institute list as country with best response to coronavirus, Australia sits eighth”
New analysis has found that New Zealand has handled the coronavirus pandemic more effectively than any other country in the world.
Key points:
- The Lowy Institute has looked at which countries and what types of Governments responded best
- Australia has been ranked as eighth in the world
- The Institute found there was not a great difference between rich and poor countries.
Australian think tank the Lowy Institute has crunched reams of data to produce a new interactive that assesses the coronavirus response of almost 100 nations. Researchers tracked COVID-19 case numbers in each country, as well as confirmed deaths and testing rates. While New Zealand took top spot, it was closely followed by Vietnam, Taiwan and Thailand, which were ranked second, third and fourth, respectively.
Australia also performed strongly and was ranked eighth in the world by the Lowy Institute. The United States has been ravaged by the pandemic and languishes near the bottom of the table, at number 94. Indonesia and India did not perform much better, sitting at numbers 85 and 86, respectively.
Lowy did not rate China’s response to the pandemic, citing a lack of publicly available testing data.
| Rank | Country |
|---|---|
| 1 | New Zealand |
| 2 | Vietnam |
| 3 | Taiwan |
| 4 | Thailand |
| 5 | Cyprus |
| 6 | Rwanda |
| 7 | Iceland |
| 8 | Australia |
| 9 | Latvia |
| 10 | Sri Lanka |
In contrast, many democracies initially responded poorly to the pandemic before “improving remarkably” after the first wave. But some major democratic nations — including the United States and the United Kingdom — then failed to capitalise on that progress because they failed to impose sufficiently strict health measures. 
Vietnam was ranked second in terms of managing the coronavirus crisis.(AP: Hau Dinh)
Mr Lemahieu said the countries at the top of the list included liberal democracies, authoritarian and hybrid regimes, but all enjoyed the benefits of effective institutions.
“And that seems to favour countries with smaller populations, more cohesive societies and more capable institutions.” He said wealthier countries had typically managed the outbreak more effectively than poorer countries, but then lost their lead by the end of 2020 as infections again surged in places like Europe and North America.
“One of the remarkable findings of this study is that there has been more or less a level playing field between developing and rich countries, because measures needed to stem the virus have been quite low tech,” he said.
But Mr Lemahieu predicted that poorer countries would soon lose ground as they struggled to obtain COVID-19 vaccines for their citizens. “With the uneven distribution and hoarding of vaccines we may well see rich countries get a decisive upper hand in crisis recovery efforts,” he said.
“The developing world will fall further behind.”
ALSO https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/covid-performance/h
