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Singapore has fallen to 39th place, its lowest spot yet on Bloomberg's Covid-19 Resilience Ranking.

It was ranked first in April, and had never dropped below 19th until the month of October, when it fell 20 places amidst record daily cases and deaths.

The ranking is updated every month and uses a range of social measures, including Covid-19 mortality rates, vaccination rates, lockdown severity, community mobility, the number of cases in a month, travel routes, and flight capacity, to assess a country's resilience to the virus.

This data is then used to calculate a final score, with Singapore scoring 57.5 for October.

Previously in April, it had scored 79.7.

Low death toll but scores poorly in other aspects

Bloomberg further noted that while Singapore had a low death toll, it had scored poorly on many other fronts due to domestic curbs limiting mobility, a slow travel reopening and a flight capacity that lags behind those of the U.S. and Europe.

As of Oct. 26, Singapore has extended the Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) Scheme to 12 countries: Australia, Switzerland, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, the U.S., Brunei and Germany.

The VTL will also be extended to the Republic of Korea (ROK) for entry into Singapore on or after Nov. 15.

The report also labelled Singapore's situation as the "worst-of-both-worlds" and speculated that this could be a reason as to why China and Hong Kong are reluctant in pursuing the same route.

However, the outlet also noted that this could be a temporary transition for Singapore due to the "unprecedented" path the country is charting in attempting to have the disease treated as endemic.

Bloomberg added, "If it (Singapore) succeeds, it will have the distinction of being one of the only places in the world to normalise without waves of death."

Who is No. 1?

Currently, Ireland is in the first position for the second month running.

The ranking cited a vaccination rate of more than 90 per cent among the country's adult population, a weakened link between infection and deaths, and the cautious lifting of restrictions, such as allowing bars and restaurants to operate at normal hours for vaccinated patrons.

Meanwhile, the bottom of the list is dominated by Southeast Asian countries with Indonesia (48), Malaysia (50), Thailand (51), Vietnam (52) and the Philippines (53) occupying five of the last six places for the third month in a row.

Bloomberg added that many of the countries' economies were still feeling the effect of the Delta variant, despite the peak of the outbreak having passed.

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