UAE response to COVID-19 pandemic ranked in global top 10

Australia’s Institute of Certified Management Accountants has created a system for ranking the effectiveness of governments in dealing with the COVID-19 threat.

The result is the Global Response to Infectious Diseases (GRID) table, an investigation that evaluates political, cultural, geographical and social dimensions and then ranks the responses of countries accordingly.

In the table that places New Zealand top, the UAE appears joint ninth — that’s above countries like Germany, India, UK, Denmark and the USA.

The criteria used to evaluate countries on how well they’re dealing with Coronavirus includes the number of tests per million of population, the number of deaths per case and per million of population, the number of cases per million of population and the CP Index (the perceived transparency of a country).

These figures indicate certain aspects of national responses.

The percentage of cases tested compared to the population indicates how preemptive the healthcare system is handling the pandemic. The amount of deaths as a ratio of cases shows the efficiency of the overall healthcare system.

And the number of deaths per million of the population demonstrates the overall effectiveness of a country’s response.

The data was entered into an algorithm, which assigned a complicated weighting to the various results. Based on this a table of performance was created, and this is where the UAE, which scored highly on all counts, was ranked in the world’s top 10.

There is no doubt that the UAE’s decisive preventative measures — such as the National Disinfection Programme, alongside futuristic technology, and innovative testing procedures — have all played their part in the country’s success.

But it’s the wise-direction and quick thinking of our leaders that has driven it all.