Index – Economics – How successful are we in managing epidemics?

Hungary is ranked 52nd in terms of epidemic management, which means that we are in the middle ground. However, there was a time when we were among the best, but the reaction to the second wave of the coronavirus was late, so we have produced very bad results in the last weeks and months.

What is it about? Based on what we rank 52nd overall? Which countries fared best and worst during the pandemic?

The Australian Lowy Institute conducted an analysis of how the coronavirus epidemic was handled around the world.

It goes without saying that the pandemic has dire consequences, with more than 100 million confirmed cases worldwide and two million deaths worldwide. However, how the epidemic has been approached is different in different regions, political systems, depending on population and economic development.

The scores on which the analysis is based, on a scale from 0 to 100, 0 being the worst, are made up of the following indicators:

• number of certified cases,
• number of confirmed deaths,
• number of confirmed cases per million people,
• the number of confirmed deaths per million people,
• the number of certified cases in proportion to the tests,
• number of tests per thousand people.

Globally and in relation to neighboring countries, we are in the middle ground

Comparing these in terms of epidemic management

Right in front of us are Kazakhstan (49 points), Kenya (48.2), Nigeria (47.4), Qatar (47.1) and Serbia (46.8), while behind us are Croatia (45.9 ), Germany (45, 8), El Salvador (43), Namibia (42) and Paraguay (40.9).

Regarding neighboring countries, Ukraine had the worst performance (90th place, 20.7 points), Romania 81st (25.4 points), Croatia already mentioned 54th, Serbia 51st and Austria 42nd (52, 8), Slovenia 33rd (58.1) and Slovakia also performed well in the World Cup, ranking 22nd with 64.5 points.

It is worth mentioning that Hungary has handled the epidemic outstandingly since the initial period, that is, since March, and from the 18th to the 19th of confirmed cases. week – late July, early August – more than 80 points. However, after that, with the easing of restrictions and the arrival of the second wave, the situation deteriorated dramatically and we reached a low point in late November and early December: our epidemic management index fell below all 10 points. It is true that the situation has improved somewhat since then.

New Zealand drives better, Brazil
worst of the pandemic

At the global level, New Zealand solved the problem better in the measured period, while Brazil responded worse to the pandemic. However, China is not included in the ranking due to the lack of public data on the tests, while Taiwan was measured independently of China.

Top 10 countries in terms of epidemic management		Ten worst performing countries in terms of epidemic management
1. New Zealand	94.4	98. Brazil	4.3
2. Vietnam	90.8	97. Mexico	6.5
3. Taiwan	86.4	96. Colombia	7.7
4. Thailand	84.2	95. Iran	15.9
5. Cyprus	83.3	94. United States	17.3
6. Rwanda	80.8	93. Bolivia	18.9
7. Iceland	80.1	92. Panama	19.7
8. Australia	77.9	91. Oman	20.3
9. Latvia	77.5	90. Ukraine	20.7
10. Sri Lanka	76.8	89. Chile	22

In terms of regions, the Asia-Pacific region performed the best (58.2 points) ahead of Europe (51), the Middle East and Africa (49) and the Americas (33.8). There is not much difference in terms of political systems, democratic countries in general handled the situation better (50.8) over authoritarian (49.2) and hybrid systems (41.6).

Countries are divided into three categories according to population and are considered large, medium or small depending on whether they have a population of more than 100 million, between 10 and 100 million or less than 10 million. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most populous countries treated the epidemic the worst (31.7), and in medium-sized (47.2) and small (56.5) countries significantly better conditions prevail.

(Cover image: Balázs Mohai / MTI)