Vietnam is among top ten of best performing economies in pandemic resilience ranking

The country posted a resilience score of 74.3 out of 100, surpassing many of the world’s powerful economies including Singapore (11th), Germany (14th), the U.S. (18th), Russia (22nd) and the U.K. (28th).

The Covid-19 Resilience Ranking, released Tuesday, surveyed 53 economies of over $200 billion on some key metrics including growth in virus cases to overall mortality rates, testing capabilities and vaccine supply agreements, capacity of local healthcare systems, the impact of lockdowns on these economies, and citizens’ freedom of movement. It used data reported until November 23.

Of the 53 economies, Vietnam had a test positivity rate of 0.1 percent while Mexico has the highest rate at 62.3 percent. The best rate of zero was scored by New Zealand, Australia and Singapore.

The report said Vietnam scored 39 out of 100 in “lockdown severity.” A high score indicates that social and economic activity are tightly restricted by government policy, meaning people are experiencing greater disruptions to their lives.

In Vietnam, as the Covid-19 situation became complicated in March, the government imposed a national social distancing campaign for around three weeks, but did not repeat the exercise after the second outbreak that hit the country last July. Instead, local social distancing measures were applied.

New Zealand achieved the best score of 22 in the “lockdown severity,” while Ireland, Malaysia and Bangladesh performed worst.

In terms of community mobility, which measures movement of people to offices and retail spaces compared to a pre-pandemic baseline, Vietnam saw a decrease of 4.7 percent in travel movement.

The report also said Vietnam has access to one potential Covid-19 vaccine produced locally, which is in the process of being prepared for human testing in the near future. If approved, it would be the first Vietnamese Covid-19 vaccine to be tested on humans.

Vietnam’s GDP growth for 2020 is forecast at 1.6 percent based on data from the International Monetary Fund. Last year, the country’s GDP growth was 7.02 percent, the second highest growth figure in the last decade, after the record 7.08 percent in 2018.

New Zealand, where the government has largely achieved the elimination of the novel coronavirus, top the 53 nations ranking with a “Covid resilience” score of 85.4. Japan and Taiwan ranked second and third, followed by South Korea and Finland.

The rest of the top 10 comprised Norway, Australia, China and Denmark.

Despite having the highest case tally and death toll in the world, the U.S. stood 18th in the ranking while China, once the Covid-19 epicenter, ranked eighth.

The last three places in the ranking were taken by Peru, Argentina and Mexico.

Vietnam, a country of 96 million people, has reported 1,321 Covid-19 cases and 35 deaths. The country has gone 84 straight days without recording any community transmission of the novel coronavirus.

Reported by Nguyen Quy, @Vnexpress