How is your country’s government doing against Covid-19?

Loaded question. Here’s how we answer it somewhat scientifically.

You could start by counting the number of Covid-19 cases in your country. But testing resources are tight. So you might have zero cases because your country didn’t test a lot of people. So next.

You could count the number of deaths by Covid-19. That’s probably a better indicator, since death and causes of death tend to be reported more accurately in most countries. But big countries with big populations would tend to have more deaths reported, just because they have more people. So next.

You could count the number of deaths out of a million of your country’s population. That would solve the “big country small country problem”. But then someone would say, hey, Covid-19 tends to kill older folks, or those with pre-existing health conditions. Lots of countries have older populations and they would have a more difficult time keeping them alive. Remember the original question – you want to compare country vs. country to see which government is doing better. It wouldn’t be fair to compare one country with a lot of old people with a country that has a lot of young people just because the young ones would die at a lower rate from Covid-19. So next.

You could find a ranking of how old countries actually are. We went out to look, and we found it. The World Bank publishes an Old Age Dependency Ratio, a ratio of those over 65 as part of the overall working population. If we have that, we can put countries on a “level playing field”.

And that’s it. Look what we found.

If you squint, here’s some things you can see straight away:

  1. Old aged populations do seem to lead to higher deaths per million. (Spearman correlation coefficient of 0.64056, if you want to get technical.)
  2. If you a drew a band down the middle of these points, countries like Italy, France, Germany, the USA and Denmark would be pretty much sitting in it. That means they aren’t performing particularly better or worse relative to the others – just about average.
  3. Countries above the band could be said to be outperforming, and countries below the band could be said to be underperforming. Basically, countries above the band have older than average populations but lower than average mortality given those populations. Similarly, countries below the band have younger than average populations with higher than average mortality rates.
  4. Look up in the sky. Is it a bird? A plane? No it’s an outlier, Japan. You must be wondering what magic does Japan have. It is a country with THE oldest population in the world, but its mortality rate is impressively low. This deserves its own separate analysis, but we can guess that a combination of really healthy old folks and natural social distancing must be a important reason. Keep an eye on it though, it looks like the infection rate is speeding up there right now.
  5. We posit that as we monitor the data, we will see more and more outliers and less and less correlation as the effect of government intervention affects the mortality results, such that factors other than the age of the population become more important, such as quarantine measures and social restriction movements.

Stay tuned for weekly updates on how each country is doing. In the meantime, here is our ranking of country’s performances as at 15th April 2020.

Sources:
OADP: World Bank

Mortality: HDX/OCHA

Mortality: Our World in Data

 Rank CountryMortality/OADP
Outperformance
OADP
Rank
Mortality
Rank
1Japan9513742
2Taiwan718514
3Georgia6510136
4Seychelles64651
5Latvia6212765
6Sri_Lanka618221
7Slovakia6010040
8Thailand588628
9Vietnam57581
10New_Zealand5610751
11Bulgaria5213179
12Russia519645
13Ukraine4810860
14Fiji47481
15Uruguay4610256
16Venezuela466620
17Malta4412682
18Greece4213391
19Cuba429755
20Costa_Rica427735
21Australia4110564
22Croatia4012888
23Finland3913596
24Nicaragua374710
25El_Salvador367539
26India355318
27Ethiopia32342
28Mongolia32331
29Lithuania3012393
30Jamaica297647
31Kazakhstan296738
32Haiti284416
33Singapore287850
34Sudan28357
35Uzbekistan28368
36Argentina268862
37Guatemala264317
38Poland2511085
39Benin24306
40Papua_New_Guinea24251
41Bangladesh234219
42Mozambique22231
43Czechia21121100
44Hungary2011797
45Belarus209575
46China207959
47South_Africa194627
48Senegal19289
49Germany18132114
50Portugal18134116
51Guinea17225
52Rwanda16171
53Estonia15124109
54Montenegro159883
55Serbia1511398
56Paraguay155641
57South_Korea149076
58Pakistan144026
59Nigeria13163
60Mauritania122412
61Suriname126048
62Italy10136126
63Denmark10125115
64Bosnia_and_Herzegovina1010494
65Slovenia10122112
66Chile98778
67Sweden8129121
68Romania8112104
69Bolivia76861
70Azerbaijan75144
71Equatorial_Guinea781
72Gabon63125
73Cote_dIvoire61913
74France5130125
75Kyrgyzstan53934
76Angola594
77Colombia47167
78Somalia42622
79Armenia38481
80Ghana31815
81Austria2115113
82Barbados2103101
83Albania29290
84Tunisia27068
85Indonesia15049
86Jordan03232
87Norway0111111
88Trinidad_and_Tobago08080
89Canada-1109110
90Mauritius-18384
91Cyprus-38992
92Egypt-34952
93Netherlands-3120123
94Kenya-4711
95Iceland-799106
96Mexico-76370
97Israel-89199
98Niger-82129
99United_Kingdom-8116124
100Switzerland-8114122
101Togo-81523
102Belgium-9118127
103Spain-9119128
104Lebanon-105969
105Gambia-111324
106Malaysia-125466
107United_States_of_America-12106118
108Morocco-136174
109Moldova-148195
110Liberia-142943
111Brazil-157489
112Djibouti-163854
113Cameroon-171431
114Afghanistan-181230
115Peru-186987
116Brunei_Darussalam-203757
117Ireland-2594119
118Iraq-262753
119Luxembourg-2793120
120Philippines-274572
121Kuwait-28533
122Honduras-304171
123Turkey-3073103
124Guyana-315586
125Oman-33437
126Burkina_Faso-361046
127Panama-3672108
128Dominican_Republic-4062102
129Ecuador-4364107
130Saudi_Arabia-471158
131Bahamas-4857105
132Qatar-61263
133Iran-6552117
134United_Arab_Emirates-72173
135Bahrain-74377
136Zimbabwe-11020130
137Zambia-1236129

Footnotes:

  1. The Seychelles, Vietnam, Fiji, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Mozambique, Rwanda and Equatorial Guinea have so far recorded 0 Covid-19. Hence their Outperformance score is derived from their OADP rank (essentially, their OADP rank minus 1 will be their Outperformance score).