EMNES Working Paper 032
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) qualified the Covid-19 virus, which originated in China in December 2019, as a pandemic, since on that date it had circulated across all continents and to the vast majority of countries worldwide.
Since January 2020, some countries have experienced a favourable trend (concomitantly recording a slowdown in new infections, a continuous increase in recoveries and a decrease in deaths linked to the disease), whilst others are still struggling to control the propagation of the virus and its negative consequences on the lives of the sick.
It seemed necessary to us, therefore, to build a synthetic index, which summarises the respective performances of countries in their strategy for fighting the virus. This index will make it possible at any time, to instantly estimate the severity of the pandemic in different countries. The index is calculated on a weekly frequency for 169 countries.
As of 10 May 2020, the average score for the countries in the sample is 0.74, corresponding to a globally moderate severity. Europe has an average score of 0.77 and has seen a significant decrease in severity in recent weeks. For Africa, the scores are between 0.99 and 0.30, with an average of 0.70. In America, scores range from a low of 0.34 to 0.98, with an average of 0.69, the highest level of severity in the world. Asia averages a score of 0.74. Oceania performs the best, with an average score of 0.98.
