COLOMBO – Sri Lanka has slipped down seven places in Forbes’s ranking of the safest countries on earth during the Covid pandemic, but still makes the top hundred, the updated survey said last week.
In June Sri Lanka ranked 85 out of a hundred but last week slipped to 92 in the ranking that is based on a complex series of assessments based on multiple medical, economic and political factors which increase or decrease the ranking.
Sri Lanka is ranked below India, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Singapore.
The ranking is not merely based on the numbers of how many patients there are or the death rate.
Instead, the survey looked at whether there is political will and social acceptance of quarantine and lockdown measures.
It looked at whether the national and local governments cooperate well. Whether a nation has good monitoring and detection and a strong medical system, and, how vulnerable a country is to economic dislocation due to COVID-19, plus how well equipped a country is to handle emergencies.
According to the survey, the safest country in the world for COVID-19 is now Germany followed closely by New Zealand and South Korea. Switzerland, which was first, has dropped back to fourth. Japan is fifth, and Australia and China are sixth and seventh.
The United States now ranks number 55, still behind Hungary, Vietnam, China, Malaysia, and Bulgaria.
The most dangerous nations are Somaliland, South Sudan, Afghanistan, and Mali, according to Deep Knowledge Group.
“Deep Knowledge Group’s new COVID-19 special analytical case study is designed to classify, analyse and rank the economic, social and health stability achieved by each of the 250 countries and regions included in its analysis, as well as the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats or risks that they present in the battle against the global health and economic crisis triggered by COVID-19,” the group says.
All told, Deep Knowledge Group says they looked at more than 140 parameters and considered more than 35,000 data points, both up significantly from June’s report.
“As vaccine research advances it is becoming more crucial to have in place a more thorough analysis of the spread of virus and various levels of success at prevention and recovery,” Deep Knowledge Group says.
“We are only just now emerging from a period of a spontaneous and widespread cessation or reduction of economic activity. Not all devastation wrought on the health and wealth of the global population [is] seen yet.”
-economynext.com