Bloomberg News
@Bloomberg-News·2.8M subscribers·40.1K videos
LIVE: New Zealand Beats Singapore As Best Place to be During Covid-19 | Top News
Posted
May 25, 2021
Views
51,490
Likes
365
Comments
4
Engagement
May 25, 2021
51,490
365
4
0.72%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
Now Playing(May 25) There’s a shakeup at the top of Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking, with last month’s No. 1—Singapore—falling in May along with other Asian economies that had contained the virus, while countries leading on vaccination continue to climb the rungs.
Lauded for its handling of the pathogen, the Asia-Pacific region accounted for all seven of the biggest declines this month in the measure of the best and worst places to be in the pandemic. Taiwan and Japan dropped out of the top 10 amid sluggish inoculation drives and resurgent cases, while some of the world’s fiercest outbreaks held down places in Southeast and South Asia.
In contrast, the U.S. and parts of Europe have been steadily climbing up the Ranking as the pandemic slowly recedes in these places. With vaccine protection growing, they’re re-opening travel, scrapping mask mandates and looking to leave Covid-19 behind: the U.K. jumped 7 spots to 11th and the U.S. is No. 13.
The reversal of fortunes reflects the game-changing impact of vaccination, especially rollouts of the breakthrough mRNA shots that not only prevent serious disease and death but appear to quell the virus’s spread. Places like France, Czech Republic and Poland saw double-digit jumps in their Ranking positions as Europe’s inoculation drive accelerated and lockdowns were lifted.
The Covid Resilience Ranking uses a wide range of data to capture where the pandemic is being handled most effectively, with the least social and economic disruption—from mortality and testing rates to vaccine access and freedom of movement. Each month, it scores economies of more than $200 billion prior to the pandemic on 10 core metrics.
New Zealand regained the top position it held for five consecutive months until April with Covid all but wiped out in the island nation, allowing its people the freedoms of pre-Covid life—except for international travel.
Still, its vaccine rollout has barely started with only 5% of the population covered, leaving New Zealand potentially vulnerable to the same dynamic that’s knocked other stars of virus containment.
After infections crept back through stringent border defenses, Singapore and Taiwan risk becoming stuck in new cycles of lockdown restrictions as they react aggressively to flareups that are mere fractions of those still being seen in some western countries that are already starting to reopen. This zero tolerance for any cases—also seen in No. 3 Australia, China at No. 9 and Hong Kong at No. 10—may become an Achilles Heel as other parts of the world accept Covid is endemic, and move on.
With new virus strains continuing to emerge, Singapore is examining its inoculation efforts, planning to stretch out the time between vaccine doses so that it can cover more of its adult population with first shots, a strategy pioneered by the U.K. in December. That’s also being done in India, where a devastating new Covid wave is wiping out entire families. The world’s second-most populous country—which is seeing about 250,000 cases and 4,000 deaths a day—plunged 20 rungs to fourth-last of the 53 economies ranked.
Argentina fell to last position in May as new infections surged past previous records, leading to a stricter lockdown.
The question now is whether new and concerning variants emerging from outbreaks in India and Latin America will stymie the quest for normalization in places like the U.S. and fourth-ranked Israel, and if Asia can catch up in the vaccination race.
The nascent revival of global travel and the road to reopening will be at the core of the Covid Resilience Ranking as we move into June.
---
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Bloomberg Quicktake brings you live global news and original shows spanning business, technology, politics and culture. Make sense of the stories changing your business and your world.
To watch complete coverage on Bloomberg Quicktake 24/7, visit or watch on Apple TV, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, Fire TV and Android TV on the Bloomberg app.
Connect with us on…
Breaking News on YouTube
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
