APAC Best Place to Be During COVID-19 Pandemic

The APAC region has consistently been the best place to be during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a ranking by Bloomberg that started in November and was most recently released on April 26.

Singapore topped the April ranking, followed by New Zealand and Australia. All countries were lauded internationally for their COVID-19 containment strategies and the latter two recently premiered a travel bubble which allows for quarantine-free travel between the two nations. Singapore is expected to replicate the move with Hong Kong soon. The region’s first, albeit smaller travel bubble between Taiwan and Pacific island nation Palau has been operational since early April.

The top 8 of the ranking that comprises 53 nations has been consistently made up of at least six APAC nations. Starting in March, Scandinavian nations Finland and Norway were replaced by two middle Eastern ones which bumped up their rating following successful vaccination campaigns: the United Arab Emirates and Israel. Since vaccinations started at the beginning of the year, the index values assigned to the top performing countries have risen across the board. The biggest jumps occurred in Israel, but also in South Korea, which suffered a COVID wave at the beginning of the year.

The U.S. made major gains, landing in rank 17 in April – up from rank 34 in November. The UK landed in rank 18, up from rank 28 in November and personal low of rank 32 in January. The country ranked worst most consistently was Mexico, which came in last every month expect April, when it rose to rank 48 ahead of Iran, Colombia, Argentina, Poland and Brazil. The full scope of the new Indian outbreak did not reflect in the ranking yet, even though the country was downgraded to rank 30 from rank 20 in March and a high of rank 16 in February.