Apr 27, 2021, 16:09 IST

Singapore has been ranked by Bloomberg as the best place to be during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Southeast Asian island nation bumped New Zealand from the top spot in Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking this week, largely thanks to Singapore’s vaccination efforts. Singapore has administered enough vaccine doses to cover nearly 20% of its 5.7 million population, according to Bloomberg.

New Zealand, which has been hailed for its successful handling of the pandemic, has vaccinated only about 1.9% of its population. Australia, which ranks third on the Covid Resilience Ranking, has vaccinated about 3.7% of its population. Israel, Taiwan, and South Korea are also among the 10 top-ranked places.

Bloomberg’s ranking looks at COVID-19 cases in the community, fatality rates, and percentage of the population covered by vaccines. It also considers quality-of-life factors like severity of lockdowns, the movement of people in retail and office spaces, and healthcare coverage.

Bloomberg said the top three countries – Singapore, New Zealand, and Australia – provided their residents “a pre-pandemic quality of life” with the exception of international travel. All three countries’ borders have been closed to most foreign tourists for over a year, but each country is cautiously looking to open up tourism with other places that have kept the virus under control.

Earlier this month, New Zealand and Australia opened a quarantine-free travel bubble between the two countries as long as neither reports a new virus outbreak, and Singapore announced this week that it would launch a long-delayed travel bubble with Hong Kong on May 26. Australia is in talks with Singapore to implement a similar bubble.