Bangladesh’s Covid resilience strengthens: Bloomberg

Bangladesh has advanced five rungs to rank 39th among 53 countries in the Bloomberg's Covid Resilience Ranking for September released on Tuesday, which indicates that the country's resilience to the deadly virus has strengthened.

This big shift upward has occurred as the country recorded its lowest number of daily deaths in nearly four months and schools reopened after being shut for more than 500 days, said the Bloomberg.

As a result of a downward trend in Covid-19 infections, Bangladesh's Resilience Ranking improved from the 48th position in July to 44th in August and 39th in September.  

Meanwhile, both India and Pakistan dropped three notches to secure the 45th and 46th position respectively.

Bloomberg scores the world's largest 53 economies based on 12 data indicators that span Covid-19 containment, quality of healthcare, vaccination coverage, overall mortality and – as of last month – progress toward restarting travel and easing border curbs.

Bangladesh achieved an overall score of 59.6 out of 100, while India scored 56.2 and Pakistan 56.1 in the September's ranking.

Scoring 100 indicates the best performance and 0 indicates the worst.

This month Ireland has been ranked the best Covid resilient country in the world. The country rose three places from August. In the country, 72.5% of the population has been vaccinated, which is one of the world's best rates.

When it comes to vaccination, Bangladesh shielded 11.9% of its population, according to Bloomberg.

Despite falling behind in the resilience ranking, India shielded more than double than Bangladesh by vaccinating 31.3% of their population and Pakistan by covering 18.6%.

The ranking revealed that Bangladesh registered only 40 confirmed cases per 1 lakh people over the past month as India registered 73 cases and Pakistan 42 cases.

The Covid-19 death rate in Bangladesh was 2% over the past three months, while in India it was 1.5% and in Pakistan 1.9%.

Meanwhile, the virus killed 166 persons per 10 lakh people in Bangladesh, 324 persons in India and 125 in Pakistan since the pandemic began.

The world's top vaccine donating country, the United States, dropped three spots to the 28th position as unfettered normalization, regardless of vaccination status, drove a surge in cases and deaths, said Bloomberg.