Bangladesh’s Covid resilience weaker than India’s, Pakistan’s

Recently India has been experiencing record surge in daily Covid-19 cases, but it is still 11 spots ahead of Bangladesh in Bloomberg's latest monthly Covid Resilience Ranking, released on Monday.

As a result of resurgence in Covid-19 infections, Bangladesh has dropped 13 positions to rank 41st in the April's ranking while the new global epicentre India has slipped 10 places to rank 30th.

Meanwhile, Pakistan rose two places to secure the 35th place in the ranking.

Bloomberg scores the largest 53 economies on their success in containing the virus with the least amount of social and economic disruption based on 10 components including Covid-19 cases per 1 lakh people and fatality rate over the past month, total deaths per 10 lakh people, positive test rate and the vaccination rate.

Lockdown severity, community mobility, economic growth, universal healthcare coverage and human development index were also considered in preparing the Covid Resilience Ranking.

Bangladesh achieved an overall score of 49.3 out of 100, while India scored 52.4 and Pakistan 51.1.

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

The Resilience Ranking reveals that the Covid-19 death rate in Bangladesh was 1.4% over the past month, while in India it was only 0.6% and in Pakistan 2%.

Bangladesh registered 96 confirmed cases per 1 lakh people over the past month as India registered 349 cases and Pakistan only 65 cases.

Meanwhile, the virus killed 67 persons per 10 lakh people in Bangladesh, 137 persons in India and 77 in Pakistan since the pandemic began.

When it comes to vaccination, Bangladesh shielded 2.4% of its population while India made it double by vaccinating 5.1%, but Pakistan covered only 0.4%.

Bloomberg forecasted the Indian economy to see 11% growth this year whereas Bangladesh to see 5% growth and Pakistan to see 2.8%.

In the lockdown severity indicator, Bangladesh scored 83, India 70 and Pakistan 59. A high score in lockdown severity indicates that the social and economic activities are tightly restricted by government policy and guidance, meaning people are experiencing a greater disruption to their lives.

Bangladesh was in top 20 in December last year

Bloomberg's Covid Resilience Ranking was introduced on 24 November last year. Since then, it is being updated each month in accordance with the countries' progress in the fight against the novel coronavirus.

Bangladesh was in the 24th position in November last year, and then it rose four places to the 20th position in December.

The situation started to worsen from the last week of December last year and continued till 25 February this year.

After a one-month improvement in resilience, the country's ranking dropped significantly from 25 March this year amid the rising coronavirus cases and deaths.

Singapore now the best place to be in the pandemic

Singapore topped the Bloomberg's Covid Resilience Ranking with a score of 79.7 in April overtaking New Zealand for the first time since the inception of the ranking.

Singapore vaccinated 19.4% of its total population and had a 0% fatality rate in the last one month.

Australia, Israel and Taiwan are the other countries among the top 5 list while Brazil, Poland and Argentina are the worst places to be in this pandemic.