The best —and worst— places to be during the worst public health crisis in a generation.

The novel coronavirus has crept its way across the globe over the past seven months, resulting in over 17.4 million cases and over 600,000 deaths.

Some countries have dealt with these chaotic months better than others. Lockdowns were imposed at different times, various strategies were considered, and restrictions varied in severity from government to government. Advanced economies like the U.S. and U.K., ranked by various pre-2020 measures as being the most prepared for a pandemic, have been repeatedly overwhelmed by infections and face a return to costly lockdowns. Meanwhile, other countries—even developing nations—have defied expectations, some all but eliminating the pathogen within their borders.

But which countries have dealt with this pandemic the best? Bloomberg crunched the numbers to determine the best places to be in the coronavirus era: where has the virus been handled most effectively with the least amount of disruption to business and society?

Methodology

Based on the MoveHub country ranking on a collection of data, based primarily on each country’s cumulative death toll (sourced from Our World In Data). Once we collated the death toll data, we then looked into what measures each government took to prevent the spread of the virus. The main correlation between strategy and death toll seemed to be timing – in other words, the sooner lockdown was imposed, the better.

One of the issues with comparing countries is that many of them report deaths in different ways. Belgium, for instance, includes deaths where coronavirus was suspected of being present, but was never confirmed with a test. It’s also been suspected that some countries have not been exactly transparent with their records.

Our data has been based on the current cases and deaths, as of 22 July 2020.

Top five countries that handled coronavirus the best

Top five countries that handled coronavirus the worst

What’s next?

According to Bloomberg, winter, vaccines, virus mutation: the outlook for the pandemic remains uncertain into 2021 and beyond. Still, having endured a year of fighting Covid-19, governments and populations now have a better understanding of the pathogen, how best to curb its spread and mitigate the damage it inflicts.