Text | MA Liang (Research Fellow, National Academy of Development and Strategic Studies, Chinese Min University, Professor, School of Public Administration)
Recently, the US news agency Bloomberg published the "COVID resilience ranking", which assesses which countries and regions around the world are suitable for living in the epidemic era. The assessment looks at how countries and regions are responding to the outbreak and how to reduce the devastating impact of the outbreak on business and society.
Bloomberg did not include all economies, but chose to rank the 53 largest economies in the world with a total economy of more than $200 billion. It was evaluated from 10 indicators, which were added together to give a total score of 0 to 100, which was used to measure the resilience of individual economies to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the current epidemic prevention and control situation, the assessment also assesses the supply of COVID-19 vaccines and predicts the future situation of these economies.
The assessment shows that the average score for 53 economies is 62.9. New Zealand came in first with 85.4 points, Japan came in second with 85 points, and Taiwan (82.9 points) came in third place. Place 4-10 includes South Korea, Finland, Norway, Australia, China, Denmark and Vietnam. Among them, China scored 80.6 points, The number of deaths per million people in China was 3, the test positive rate was 0.1%, and there were 5 candidate vaccine supply agreements that entered the clinical phase III.
The 11th-20th places in the list are Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada, Germany, Thailand, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Indonesia and Ireland. In the bottom round is Mexico with a score of 37.6 points; in the second place is Argentina, with 41.1 points; and in the bottom three is Peru, with a score of 41.6 points. In addition, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Colombia, Iran, the Philippines, and France scored low.
How to measure the resilience of an economy to epidemic prevention and control?
Bloomberg's evaluation index system includes a lot of data related to epidemic prevention and control and the resumption of work and production, which can comprehensively assess the performance and potential of an economy's epidemic prevention and control. After these indicators are standardized, the equal weights are added up to a total score, and the higher the score, the stronger the resilience of the economy.
The confirmed case rate in the past month reflects the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 per 100,000 people in the past month, while the death rate in the past month measures the proportion of deaths in confirmed cases in the past month. Given the vagaries of COVID-19, these two indicators can be updated in a timely manner and reflect the latest state of affairs. Cumulative mortality, which refers to the deaths per million people in an economy since the outbreak of the epidemic, can reflect the overall level of medical care. The positive test rate refers to the proportion of people who have tested positive for COVID-19, and it is generally believed that the higher the proportion means that the economy will only test for severely ill patients.
Vaccine supply is largely measured by the number of vaccine supply agreements that have entered phase III of clinical trials, and given the long cycle of vaccine development, economies with more protocols are more likely to be guaranteed. The severity of the lockdown refers to the degree of interference of the government's epidemic prevention and control policies on economic and social activities, measured by the strictness of the epidemic prevention measures adopted by the government. Resident mobility refers to the degree of decline in the mobility of residents to work and shopping compared with before the epidemic.
The economic growth rate refers to the forecast of the GDP growth rate of the economy in 2020 according to the current situation, which can reflect the overall progress of the resumption of work and production. In addition, universal health care is a measure of health care coverage by 23 indicators, such as childhood vaccination rates. The Human Development Index is a comprehensive indicator of life expectancy, years of schooling per capita and per capita income that reflects the underlying capacity of an economy to respond to the impact of the pandemic.
Before the outbreak, developed countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom were regarded as capable of defeating the epidemic, but their prevention and control performance after the outbreak was surprising. Relatively speaking, the prevention and control performance of many countries that were not very optimistic before has been eye-catching, and the performance of some developing countries is also worthy of recognition.
Judging from the rankings, the top economies have some common characteristics, which means that they have "done it right" with some key choices to effectively prevent and control the epidemic. Through comparison, we can see that these economies have been able to quickly take severe measures such as lockdowns, strengthen virus detection and close contact tracing, block the spread of the epidemic and strengthen normal management. New Zealand, which ranks first, has taken precautions and resolutely adopted severe lockdown measures, although the tourism industry that depends on it has been hit hard, but the national life has basically returned to normal, and the vaccine supply is also very promising. China has taken similar measures, decisively closing the Wuhan passage and adopting large-scale testing to ensure that the epidemic prevention and control is not slackened.
At the same time, the governments of the top-ranked economies can gain a high degree of trust from the people, and the cooperation and support of the people have also enabled the effective implementation of epidemic prevention and control policies. In addition, good health readiness has allowed these economies to remain resilient enough to return to normal soon after a brief period of disorder. In terms of vaccine preparation, rich countries have taken the lead and often have access to multiple potential vaccine supplies, which has laid the foundation for them to win the epidemic prevention and control war in the future.
Relatively speaking, the backward economies have made some common mistakes, they have not made the right decisions on the above key measures, and their policy implementation capacity and public cooperation have not been enough, resulting in loopholes and problems in epidemic prevention and control. More importantly, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought many countries back to square one, showing signs of a rise in the proportion of extreme poverty in the world that has been declining since the 1990s, and further widening the global gap between rich and poor.
Compared with the previous versions of the epidemic prevention and control performance rankings released by other institutions (such as Oxford University's "COVID-19 Government Response Severity Index"), Bloomberg's ranking has its own characteristics. For example, it not only considers the current epidemic prevention and control, but also predicts the future trend of the epidemic. It has both basic capability assessments and real-time dynamic monitoring. However, its equal weight summation may ignore the differences between indicators, and there is still room for debatable indicators selected in different dimensions. As the publisher said, the dynamics of epidemic prevention and control change rapidly, many important factors cannot be quantified, and the environment and luck will also play a role, so the ranking is for reference only.
(The article represents the views of the author only.) Editor-in-charge Email: [email protected])