Ben Hamilton
April 28th, 2021

Share

Back with a vengeance (photo: Pixabay)

Denmark has been rated the 14th best country in the world at dealing with the Coronavirus Crisis, according to a list compiled by Bloomberg.

Perhaps the recent news that its J Day, the date by when the whole country will be fully vaccinated, has been moved yet again – this time to August 8 – played against it.

But overall, people in Denmark have never been ordered to stay in their homes, or suffered severe overcrowding at hospitals, and this has helped it to achieve a better ranking than most.

New Zealand number one
New Zealand, which for long periods has had no new cases, topped the rankings ahead of Singapore, which has been applauded for its rapid vaccine rollout and low infection rate.

The rankings take into account ten parameters, including the strength of a country’s restrictions, performance of its health sector, freedom of movement and pressure on its hospital capacity.

Only 53 countries were included.

Experience of SARS
It would appear that a number of Asian countries have performed well – a result that has been attributed to their experience of dealing with SARS in 2003.

“They have been very quick to close their borders, and then they are extremely effective at infection detection,” journalist Christina Boutrup, an expert on China, told Bloomberg.

“The population is generally more afraid of getting sick, they were quick to put on facemasks, and the authorities were quick to take the situation very seriously.”

Surprising results perhaps
Completing the top 15 were Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the UAE, Finland, Hong Kong, Vietnam, China, Thailand, Denmark and Norway.

Other notables included the USA (17), the UK (18), Switzerland (21), Russia (22), Ireland (25), Germany (26), India (30), Sweden (32) and Brazil (53).

If some of those results look surprising, it’s probably because subsequent vaccine efforts have elevated certain countries.