The best and worst places to be this pandemic Christmas

The omicron variant is broadly halting the move toward normalization that characterized 2021, although reluctance to return to containment measures and other pre-vaccine restrictions is making the difference between the best and worst places to be during the pandemic. in December.

The omicron variant, the most transmissible yet, is rapidly becoming dominant in the United States and Europe, overtaking the delta variant with unprecedented speed. This has meant that the 53 economies scored in the COVID Resilience Ranking Bloomberg reports to become generally stricter, with restrictions in the last month of the year to limit the mobility of people as cases rise from London to Sydney.

However, most major economies are refraining from reverting to the measures used in 2020 to contain the virus that crippled the economy, and instead relying on more accelerated administration of booster doses to combat the new one. variant.

In December, places of South America They gained ground, in part, thanks to warmer weather and a slower arrival of the omicron variant. Chile dethroned the United Arab Emirates to take first place. Now it is summer in Santiago, tourism has resumed and Chileans are the population with the second highest vaccination rate in the world among countries with more than 1 million inhabitants, reflecting a change in a region that was devastated by the virus original, but largely unaffected by delta.

While omicron may thus far be the best evader of immune protection among the newer variants of the virus, preliminary research shows that booster doses may still provide sufficient protection.

Vaccination remains a key differentiator in the ranking; December’s top 10 include countries like Ireland, Finland Y Canada, facing worrying new waves, but also among the first to offer the third dose.

The COVID Resilience Ranking, which is compiled using 12 data indicators covering virus containment, quality of health care, vaccination coverage, overall mortality and progress towards resuming travel, indicates how the world’s 53 largest economies they are responding to the same threat.

Despite facing a sharp increase in cases, U.S and the United Kingdom They have ruled out the return of strict restrictions, for now, and remain largely unchanged in December at 12th and 10th, respectively. This hands-off strategy means that your outlook for the new year depends on whether the number of deaths follows the trend of increasing cases or whether the omicron wave turns out to be mild.

In EuropeA few countries – Germany, Norway and the Netherlands – have imposed far-reaching restrictions to slow the resurgence of the virus, causing them to drop in the rankings. Austria, however, came out of a three-week shutdown in time for Christmas and advanced 17 spots to No. 31 in December.

South Africa, the original epicenter of the omicron outbreak, fell seven places to the penultimate of 53 countries due to a higher rate of positive tests and entry bans imposed by other countries on their travelers. Meanwhile, Southeast Asia dominates the bottom of the ranking for the seventh consecutive month.

Opening

To capture which of the 53 economies is making its reopening, we focused on its advancement in vaccination, the severity of the closures, and the restrictions in place, all of which assesses how far each location is from pre-COVID levels of normality.

The scores for the top-ranked locations generally reflect the best-case scenario of high vaccination rates, relatively controlled mortality levels, recovery of flight capacity to pre-pandemic levels, and few travel restrictions for vaccinated individuals.

Among the top 10 places in the ranking that continue to block the most foreign tourists, nine are in the Asia-Pacific region, including mainland China. Despite having fully inoculated about 85% of its 1.4 billion people, China’s international borders remain closed.

Vaccination is where places like Europe and the United States make up for their weaknesses from the initial stage of COVID containment. Their rankings improved in the early summer (the United States ranked first in June), as investment in research and a focus on rapid deployments proved critical.

Most vaccines were shown to be somewhat less effective against the delta variant and recent evidence indicates that immunity declines six months after vaccination, so many of the countries that have achieved wide coverage are expanding their vaccination campaigns, implementing booster doses for adults and expanding immunization to children.

Chile, the number one for December, began giving boosters in August and approximately 53% of the total population has already received their third dose.

Now that rich countries consider that booster doses are necessary to protect against the omicron variant, inequality in access to vaccines between rich and poor countries will worsen. The WHO said the rush to roll out third doses in the developed world will cause a vaccine deficit of 3 billion by early 2022.

If one thing is clear, it is that past performance in the fight against the pandemic is no guarantee of future success or failure. Countries have been hampered time and again by the vagaries of the biggest health crisis in a generation, but some have also found ways to reverse devastating situations, whether through science, social cohesion, or simply learning from the past. .