This Sydney-based think tank has made the COVID Index performance to assess the response of 98 countries globally to the outbreak of the novel virus and to see what impact geography, political systems, population size, and economic development have had on COVID-19 outcomes around the world.
The index consists of the six indicators: Confirmed cases, Confirmed deaths, Confirmed cases per million people, Confirmed deaths per million people, Confirmed cases as a proportion of tests and Tests per thousand people.
"An average across those indicators was then calculated for individual countries in each period and normalised to produce a score from 0 (worst performing) to 100 (best performing). Collectively, these indicators point to how well or poorly countries have managed the pandemic in the 36 weeks that followed their hundredth confirmed case of COVID-19," the institute says on its website.
Although the coronavirus outbreak started in China, countries in the Asia–Pacific, on average, proved the most successful at containing the pandemic.
Thus, New Zealand tops the ranking with a score of 94.4 points.
Vietnam, Taiwan and Thailand follow with 90.9, 86.4 and 84.2 points respectively.
Cyprus ranks fifth (83.3) and is the best ranking European country. Rwanda comes sixth (80.8)
Croatia comes 54th with the score of 45.9 points and is thus between Switzerland (46.3) and Germany (45.8). Three of Croatia's neighbours -- Slovenia, Serbia and Hungary -- rank 33rd, 51st and 52nd respectively.
The worst three performers are South American countries: Colombia, Mexico and Brazil, ranking 96th, 97th and 98th respectively.
The United States comes 94th with a mere 17.3 points.
China was not included in this ranking due to a lack of publicly available data on testing, the institute says.