Combating coronavirus: UAE's response to Covid-19 rated among the best

The UAE's response to contain the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic has been rated highly by its residents in a survey conducted across 23 nations, beating the likes of the UK, France, Italy, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, the USA and Germany, among others.

The UAE achieved third highest score - at par with India - after China and Vietnam. All the other Western governments ranked poorly in the survey, even below the global average score.

Conducted by Singapore's Blackbox Research and online panel firm Toluna, the UAE and India scored 59 points as compared to 41 by the USA, 36 by Italy, 26 by France, 41 by Germany, 43 by Australia and 56 by New Zealand. Only residents of China (87) and Vietnam (77) voted more favourably.

The survey assessed across four key performance indicators of national political leadership, corporate leadership, community and media.

The UAE residents awarded the highest ratings to media, leadership, and community, respectively, for their efforts to fight the pandemic, reflecting that the country is fighting against the pandemic successfully at the national level.

The strong rating for media was reflected in another recent survey by global consultancy McKinsey & Co. where 65 per cent of respondents said they will allocate more time to reading news online.

In addition, the authorities in the UAE have been proactively working to contain the pandemic, carrying out robust approach towards testing its residents for Covid-19 while Dubai also completed 100 per cent sanitisation of the city. Of late, the government has been slowly but cautiously easing preventive measures and restriction on the movement of the people. This approach by the government has been hailed locally and abroad.

Globally, Japan ranked last with an index score of 16, due to its perceived poor political performance and business leadership, as well as lacklustre community performance. Right behind France, countries like Hong Kong (27) and Korea (31) also fared poorly with their citizens.

"Overall, most countries are not performing up to their citizens' expectations. The Chinese are exceptionally satisfied, which could be attributed to how they are already in their post-Covid-19 recovery phase amid the global outbreak, which gave a sense that China has handled the crisis well," said David Black, founder and CEO of Blackbox Research.

"We are also seeing major cracks in self-belief across the Western world," he said.

waheedabbas@khaleejtimes.com