New Zealand tops Lowy Institute list as country with best response to coronavirus, Sri Lanka 10th

New analysis has found that New Zealand has handled the coronavirus pandemic more effectively than any other country in the world.

Australian think tank the Lowy Institute has crunched reams of data to produce a new interactive that assesses the coronavirus response of almost 100 nations.

Researchers tracked COVID-19 case numbers in each country, as well as confirmed deaths and testing rates.

While New Zealand took top spot, it was closely followed by Vietnam, Taiwan and Thailand, which were ranked second, third and fourth, respectively.

Australia also performed strongly and was ranked eighth in the world by the Lowy Institute, while Sri Lanka was ranked 10th.

The United States has been ravaged by the pandemic and languishes near the bottom of the table, at number 94. Indonesia and India did not perform much better, sitting at numbers 85 and 86, respectively.

Lowy did not rate China’s response to the pandemic, citing a lack of publicly available testing data.

The Institute’s Herve Lemahieu said the interactive showed that smaller countries had typically tackled COVID-19 more effectively than big countries.

“Countries with populations fewer than 10 million people proved more agile, on average, than the majority of their larger counterparts in handling the health emergency,” he told the ABC’s Coronacast podcast. (With inputs from ABC News)