FriendLink Malaysia ranks last in The Economist's return to normalcy index

 

Malaysia has ranked last in an index by The Economist to measure how well countries are doing in returning to normalcy after the Covid-19 pandemic.

The newly launched index and tracker measure three types of activities, namely travel (road use, public transport, flights), leisure time (time spent not at home, cinema revenues, attendance at sporting events), and commercial activity (retail and offices).

Of the 50 nations on the index, Malaysia has the worst score - 27.3 points - behind Taiwan, which has 43.7 points.

The Economist said Malaysia's previous score in April was 55.

The highest-ranked Southeast Asian country on the index is Indonesia at 40th spot, followed by Thailand (41), Singapore (43) and the Philippines (44). All these countries had a score of between 55.5 and 58.3.

A score of 100 indicates pre-pandemic levels of activity.

The Economist report noted that Malaysia was "suffering from a deadly wave of infections caused by the more transmissible Delta variant (of Covid-19)".

 The report also said that with the factors it tracks at a constant, a standard deviation increase in official Covid-19 deaths reduced normalcy by four points, while tightening lockdown rules lowered normalcy by five points.

"Normalcy tracks official death tolls from the previous month - which could reflect infections from 60 days ago - much more closely than current case counts.

"It is also linked only weakly to indirect measures of uncounted cases, such as the share of tests that are positive or changes in deaths from any cause.

"And although vaccines increase normalcy, they do so only once they have had enough time to reduce deaths," it said.

It added that life remains abnormal in most countries where the pandemic erupted before enough people could get vaccinated.

The 50 countries on the index account for 76 percent of the world's population and 90 percent of its gross domestic product.

The index will be updated weekly. - Mkini