The Covid-19 pandemic poses a major challenge for all countries around the world, and has put enormous pressure on the health and organisational systems of even the most developed Western and Asian economies. While maintaining certain standards set by the World Health Organization (WHO), measures to contain the pandemic vary widely from country to country, as do prevention initiatives to avoid or mitigate the effects of new waves of the pandemic. Some of the countries that have best responded to the Coronavirus pandemic are Vietnam, Taiwan, Iceland, New Zealand and Singapore, all of which launched rapid emergency plans and effective containment and tracking protocols that rely on new technologies.
The European country to have acted most promptly is Iceland, thanks in part to its small population. Like many Asian countries, Iceland launched strict and precise protocols before other European states and created teams to identify and isolate cases, a strategy identified by the WHO as the basis for overcoming the pandemic. These Icelandic teams launched a series of interviews with people who tested positive for the virus, tracking down all possible contacts. Those positive were required to isolate in their homes and received financial support from the government. Unlike other parts of Europe, Iceland was able to avoid general lockdown measures thanks to this rapid response. The total number of recorded cases in Iceland as of 24th November stands at just over 5,000 and the majority of these are concentrated in the capital Reykjavík.
Discover more on the countries that have best responded to the pandemic: