Ireland has been ranked as the best place to be during the coronavirus pandemic, according to Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking.
The State now leads a pack of European nations that sit at the top of the ranking, unseating Norway from the top spot and ahead of Spain and the Netherlands.
The ranking is a monthly snapshot that tracks 53 economies’ performance in Covid containment, quality of healthcare, vaccination coverage, overall mortality and progress towards restarting travel and easing border curbs.
It marks a turnaround from the beginning of this year, when the State had the worst coronavirus outbreak in the world, followed by some of Europe's harshest lockdown measures.
Bloomberg praised Ireland's “pioneering moves” to largely limit quarantine-free entry to vaccinated people.
Responding to the updated ranking, Fine Gael Senator Regina Doherty said: “Ireland has, at various times during the pandemic, ranked highly in global surveys on dealing with Covid-19. We have now replaced Norway as Bloomberg’s number one country in the world in which to live with the Delta variant.
“According to the report Ireland has pulled off a ‘startling turnaround’ since earlier this year.
There have been really tough times for everyone. But we have had a good, coherent & cohesive response overall to #COVID19 from the public & the health services. Good to see Ireland ranked now as No 1 in the World's Covid Resiliance ranking @HSELive https://t.co/xud9FTb64a
— Paul Reid (@paulreiddublin) September 28, 2021
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“This is thanks to our world-class vaccination programme; indeed the Bloomberg report notes us as having one of the world’s best vaccination rates. We now have over 90 per cent of our adult population fully vaccinated and almost 90 per cent of those aged 16 and over are fully vaccinated.”
The news was welcomed by HSE chief executive Paul Reid who tweeted: “There have been really tough times for everyone. But we have had a good, coherent & cohesive response overall to #COVID19 from the public & the health services. Good to see Ireland ranked now as No 1 in the World’s Covid Resiliance ranking”.
