India scores 100/100 in Oxford University’s tracker measuring Governments’ response to COVID-19
India, with a score of 100, has ranked top on a tracker designed by Oxford University to measure the response of governments’ to the COVID-19.
The tracker is based on indicators such as school closures, travel bans as well as measures such as emergency investment in healthcare, fiscal measure and investment in vaccines by the governments.
However, the index does not represent the effectiveness of these measures as countries such as China, South Korea and Singapore which have been successful in flattening the pandemic curve, do not feature among the top countries in the index.
Some of the other countries to score a perfect 100 in the tracker are Israel, Mauritius, New Zealand and South Africa.
Countries like United States, United Kingdom are way below India in the index with a score of 66.7 and 71.4 respectively.
It is noteworthy that on one side countries like Spain waited till 10,000 cases to strengthen their measures to a score above 90, India on the other side strengthened its measures to a score above 90 when it had only 500 cases.
Thomas Hale, Associate Professor at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, who leads this project, said, “Our index cannot, of course, tell the full story, but we believe the data we have collected can help decision-makers and public health professionals examine the robustness of government responses and provide the first step into understanding exactly what measures have been effective in certain contexts, and why.” The tracker is designed to keep updating governments’ response as the situation progresses.
