Pakistan is handling COVID-19 much better than India, according to new rankings

Ideally, every single country in the world should be putting up a strong fight against the coronavirus pandemic that has defined pretty much all of 2020. However, some countries have simply been much better in dealing with the outbreak than others. And in a development that can only boost our faith in how we are handling the deadly pandemic, newly released rankings show that Pakistan has surpassed India by quite a bit in terms of COVID-19 resilience.

Issued by Bloomberg and published in The Print, the Covid Resilience Rankings show that Pakistan currently stands at 27th position globally with regards to how effectively it has managed to deal with the raging pandemic. India lags behind in 34th position, with a resilience score of 58.1 compared to Pakistan’s 61.7.

India has also been surpassed by the Asian nations of Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia. In fact, a dozen Asian countries have scored better than India when it comes to COVID-19 resilience.

New Zealand, unsurprisingly, has taken the global lead with a score of 85.4.

The Bloomberg report has based its rankings on the degree of effectiveness with which a country has handled the virus with the least amount of disruption to business and society. The rankings are a product of a survey of 53 economies of over 200 billion dollars on key metrics including growth in virus cases to overall mortality rates, testing capabilities and vaccine supply arrangements, local healthcare capacity, economic impact of lockdowns, and the citizens’ freedoms of movement.

According to the survey, Pakistan has been able to perform so well because of its “relative remoteness” and younger average population that has kept the overall mortality rates low. Plus, with Pakistan’s economy growing steadily despite the pandemic, it is clear that the country has managed to handle the economic repercussions of COVID-19 fairly well.