The Emirates, Cyprus, Bahrain and Israel are the leading nations with fast and effective booster shot campaigns

The UAE has come first in the latest Covid-19 global resilience rankings, followed by Cyprus, Bahrain and Israel.

The Emirates was placed first in the Pandemic Resilience Index 2022, which was compiled by the Consumer Choice Centre, an advocacy group based in the US.

Mass testing, vaccination approval and distribution of booster shots were among the key factors that helped the UAE to secure the top spot.

The original index, which collated data up until March last year, ranked the UAE second in the world when it came to Covid-19 resilience.

However, the updated index incorporates new data between the end of March and late November last year, taking into consideration each country’s booster programme.

“The UAE was the pioneer of the booster rollout,” said Maria Chaplia, research manager at the Consumer Choice Centre.

“Countries such as New Zealand, Ukraine, Australia, Spain and Canada took five months longer to get it up and running.

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Though the global pandemic has led to a slew of major changes in the forthcoming Expo 2020 Dubai, the construction of the Philippines’ ‘Bangkota’ pavilion remains unhampered and key plans formulated by its team prior to the emergence of COVID-19 stay on, said the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

DTI Assistant Secretary for the Trade Promotions Group and PH Expo 2020 Dubai, Alternate Commissioner General Rosvi C. Gaetos said the ‘Bangkota’ is nearing its full completion rate and will soon be ready to captivate the curiosities of the world in the post-pandemic era.

“We are 97% complete with the pavilion; we’re lucky to have a very good building contractor and also a very good project management team,” said Gaetos. “By August 30th, the fully completed pavilion will be turned over to us. That’s the time we can start the technical rehearsals in preparation for the opening this October. So, we are very much ready.”

“I’m glad that with this Dubai Expo, the Philippine government has done all out, in support for budgetary and otherwise. If not for the pandemic, we would have really accomplished everything as early as last year,” she added.

Although the construction, she said, is progressing on all fronts, and in no time would be ready for the much-vaunted largest event ever to be staged in the Arab world, the process had not come easy stemming from the limitations of mobility, especially during the height of the pandemic last year when mutual isolations between countries had dawned.

While they were trying to mount the re-imagined 4,000 years story of the Philippines through the pavilion, the Assistant Secretary said the DTI also had to ‘re-imagine’ ways to supervise the mega-project remotely to ensure that the contractors were bringing to life the designs, true to the vision and ideas of the creative team.

“We were off-site when the pandemic hit; we just came back [from Dubai] to Manila. So it was a big challenge. [Nonetheless], it appears that the vision of the architect and of the government has been met. The only thing that’s missing now would be putting together the Visitors’ Journey to the exhibits. It’s actually the last piece that we are finalizing now,” she said.

“The postponement [of the Expo last year],” she added, “was also good for us because it gave us an opportunity to fine-tune many things. But everything was being done virtually because we could not travel to Dubai to inspect the pavilion onsite. It really became a test of our patience and a test of our creativity to be able to build the pavilion with us here.”

Going to many great lengths just to keep the ground running and meet what had seemed to be impossible during the extraordinary global circumstances set this enormous overseas endeavor apart from the various Philippines’ expo participations in the past, indeed.

Targets remain big as before

The DTI Assistant Secretary admitted that uncertainties had come into play resulting from the disruptions that spiraled during the pandemic.

“The biggest impact of the pandemic is the uncertainty created in our plans. We may have been successful in delivering the pavilion according to our vision and to our goals, but how sure are we that visitors will come and visit it? How sure are we that people will appreciate what we have done? Again, this is the most expensive Philippine pavilion that the government has ever undertaken. I guess that’s the biggest question mark that the pandemic brought to fore,” she related.

“The responsibility for delivering rests largely on the shoulders of the organizers, but they had assured us that the number of target visitors remains. If they can deliver that, we will be incredibly happy customers.”

With the UAE achieving milestone after milestone even amid this global crisis, however, DTI expressed confidence that the visitors target of 25 million during the six-month-long mega-event would be hit, bolstered by Dubai’s proven mantra: ‘Build it and they shall come’.

In the middle of this month, the UAE placed on top of the global rankings in terms of vaccination rate, overtaking Israel, after it administered more than 120 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine per 100 people.

Before this, the Gulf country’s major push to inoculate its nationals and residents alike had proved to be an effective booster shot in gaining the confidence of consumers across the globe. It was named the No. 1 most resilient country in the world for its response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Middle East and No. 2 worldwide by the Consumer Choice Center (CCC), a non-for-profit organization representing the rights of consumers in over 100 countries.

Taking all these into consideration, the sight of Expo’s success is imminent proving the world once more the other mantra of Dubai that ‘nothing is impossible’ with a bold vision and optimism.

Originally published here.

Earlier this month, the Consumer Choice Center released its Pandemic Resilience Index to identify global health system preparedness for the COVID-19 crisis.

The Index looks at 40 countries through the prism of the following factors: vaccination approval, its drive, and time lags that have put brakes on it, critical care bed capacity, and mass testing. Most EU countries ranked average, which provides a valuable insight into what can be done moving forward to 

At a time of fast globalisation, there is every reason to expect more pandemics in the future, and preparation is key. According to the findings, most European countries demonstrated an average level of resilience except Slovakia, Luxembourg, Austria, Cyprus, Malta, Denmark, and Germany, whose preparation was above average. 

Some EU countries stood out on indicators such as testing or hospital capacity. One such example is Slovakia. In November 2020, the country tested two-thirds of its population, and its average daily tests score is highest among all 40 countries, with Cyprus going second. Germany, on the other hand, has the highest number of ICU beds per 100k people, with Austria and Luxembourg being not far behind, compared to other EU member states.

Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, and the Netherlands were remarkably behind on testing than the rest of the European Union. In terms of vaccination drive, Hungary and Malta are explicit outliers. As of March 31st, 32.3 per cent of Malta’s population received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, in Hungary it’s 21.4 per cent.

There is a noticeable variation in terms of the number of critical care beds in the EU. While France and Lithuania have 16.3 and 15.6 per 100 thousand people, Ireland has only 5 and Portugal – 4. The test capacity is more or less the same, with Slovakia, Luxembourg, Cyprus, and Denmark being clear outliers. 

With a lag of 37 days behind the UK and over 10 days behind the rest of the EU in terms of vaccine rollout, the Netherlands had the lowest resilience in the bloc.

Although the number of ventilators per 100 thousand wasn’t included in the final ranking due to the conflicting data, the Index features it as an appendix. According to the data that we have, Italy, Belgium, and France – all severely hit by COVID – had a much lower number of those (between 7 and 8 per 100 thousand people) compared to Germany, Bulgaria, and Lithuania. However, health system resilience is only one of the factors that contributed to high mortality, and Spain, on the contrary, had 29 ventilators per 100k people. 

The vaccination rate is where the EU truly lacks behind Israel, UAE, and the UK. Only 16 per cent of the EU population have received a dose of a vaccine, which is only a third of Israel’s rate. The EU’s procurement bureaucracy slowed down the vaccine rollout. Failure to plan forward and negotiate fast and effectively with vaccine producers resulted in supply and distribution problems. 

The EU definitely could have done better in terms of preparedness for the pandemic. However, now that the weakness of health systems have been blatantly exposed, the Union can make the necessary adjustments and look up to countries such as Israel and UAE to avoid past mistakes. 

Israel’s quick vaccination rollout landed it the top spot in the global survey, followed by its new ally, the United Arab Emirates.

Israel’s health system was named the most resilient to Covid-19 in the world in a recently released Pandemic Resilience Index. The index, published by global consumer advocacy group Consumer Choice Center, surveyed 40 countries about their health systems’ preparedness and resilience to the pandemic.

The index examined five factors: vaccination approval, vaccination drive, time lags that put breaks on giving vaccines, critical care bed capacity and mass testing. While Israel did not have the highest number of ICU beds per capita or a high average of daily Covid-19 tests, it “is a clear winner when it comes to the speed of vaccinations” – which led to its top spot on the global list.

Second place went to Israel’s neighbor, the United Arab Emirates, which also had a high vaccination rate. The United States, the United Kingdom and Bahrain round off the top five places, while the bottom three went to Australia, New Zealand and Ukraine.

“The pandemic has put health systems globally to an emergency test and exposed both their strong and weak sides,” says Fred Roeder, CCC’s Managing Director and the index’s co-author. “In particular, that concerns hospital capacity, planning abilities, and the existence of a regulatory system that is able to act fast and efficiently when it comes to testing and vaccination, among other things.”

“Moving forward, we hope our Index will help policymakers identify weak spots in our health systems so we can be better prepared for future crises,” he added.

Originally published here.