Study reveals the Netherlands’ relatively poor handling of coronavirus crisis

A recent study has rated the way the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has been handled by the Dutch government as relatively poor, with the Netherlands ranking 75th out of the 98 countries included in the study.

The Lowry Institute COVID Performance Index

The COVID Performance Index is a study aimed at discerning how countries around the world performed in tackling the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The study included 98 countries that were sorted into four categories - regions, political systems, population size and economic development - to determine if there were any variations between the different types of states’ responses.

The study measured how well countries responded to the pandemic by collecting available data for six different indicators:

• Confirmed cases
• Confirmed deaths
• Confirmed cases per million people
• Confirmed deaths per million people
• Confirmed cases as a proportion of tests
• Tests per 1.000 people

An average was then calculated for each country and then standardised to produce a score between zero and 100, with 100 being the best possible response.

The Netherlands' response to coronavirus 

The study ranked the Netherlands’ response to coronavirus 75th out of the 98 countries, with a score of only 33,5. This rather poor score sees the Netherlands rank below the likes of France (34,9), Belgium (35,6), the UK (37,5), and Germany (45,8), but above Russia (32), South Africa (25,4), and the United States (17,3).

The Lowry Institute also found that countries with smaller populations, countries with democratic governments, and countries situated in the Asia Pacific region performed best when it came to combating the spread of the virus. European countries and other more economically developed countries found themselves overwhelmed when the virus originally broke, mainly due to a greater flow of people passing through these countries. However, they have also experienced the greatest improvement to their pandemic responses.

Best responses to the COVID-19 pandemic

The countries claiming the bottom spots in the ranking are Colombia (7,7), Mexico (6,5), and Brazil (4,3). The top ten countries with the best coronavirus responses are:

1. New Zealand - 94,4
2. Vietnam - 90,8
3. Taiwan - 86,4
4. Thailand - 84,2
5. Cyprus - 83,3
6. Rwanda - 80,8
7. Iceland - 80,1
8. Australia - 77,9
9. Latvia - 77,5
10. Sri Lanka - 76,8

(75.) The Netherlands

For more information regarding the performance of countries by category and the study’s methodology, visit the Lowy Institute's website.