Sri Lanka among top 10 as NZ, Vietnam lead COVID-19 performance ranking

Sri Lanka rank among the top 10 in a COVID Performance Index of almost 100 countries for their successful handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with Britain and America near the bottom of the pile, Reuters reported.

New Zealand, Vietnam and Taiwan rank the top three.

According to Reuters, the  said its index published on Thursday excludes China, where the first cases were identified in December 2019, due to a lack of publicly available data.

Other countries in the top 10 include Thailand, Cyprus, Rwanda, Iceland, Australia and Latvia — countries with fewer reported cases and deaths both in aggregate and per capita terms.

Fourteen-day rolling averages of new daily figures were calculated for confirmed cases, confirmed cases per million people, confirmed deaths, confirmed deaths per million people, confirmed cases as a proportion of tests, and tests per thousand people, the Lowy Institute said.

The report comes as world coronavirus cases surpass 100 million with the death toll exceeding 2 million.

The US, with over 25 million confirmed cases, ranked 94, while India, with more than 11 million cases, was 86th. Britain, with the highest number of the deaths in Europe, stood at 66th.

The index showed countries in Asia-Pacific proved the most successful in containing the pandemic, while Europe and the US were “quickly overwhelmed” by the rapid spread of COVID-19.