Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has congratulated the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) — the nerve centre of Pakistan's coronavirus response — the team of the Ehsaas Programme and the State Bank of Pakistan after The Economist ranked Pakistan among the best performing countries in handling the coronavirus pandemic. 
The Economist's Normalcy Index tracks the progress of 50 countries' return to pre-pandemic life based on eight indicators classified into three categories.

Each country is scored out of 100 — the benchmark score for the pre-pandemic level of activity — on the index, where Pakistan's current score is 84.4. This tracker is updated every week.

At present, the top-ranked country on the index in Hong Kong (though an 'autonomous' region of China), with a score of 96.3, followed by New Zealand that has a score of 87.8. Pakistan is ranked third.

Among other countries, China is ranked 19th with a score of 72.9 and India — which has been struggling in face of the pandemic after a disastrous outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant — is ranked 48 with a score of 46.5.

Sharing a screenshot of the index on Wednesday, Prime Minister Imran Khan tweeted: "Congratulations to NCOC members, Ehsaas team & State Bank of Pakistan for effective response to Covid-19 pandemic; and above all thanks to the mercy of Almighty Allah."

South Korea and Colombia are at the bottom, each having an overall score of zero.

According to The Economist, the index "covers 50 of the world's largest economies that together account for 90 per cent of global GDP (gross domestic product) and 76 per cent of the world's population."

They are scored out of 100 based on eight indicators, classified into three categories. The first category of transport and travel includes public transport in big cities, the extent of traffic congestion in these cities and the number of international and domestic flights.

Indicators such as the number of time people spend outdoors, cinema and box-office revenues and attendance at sports events are clubbed together under the category of recreation and entertainment, and footfall in shops and occupancy of offices are grouped under the category of retailing and work.

The separate tracker for each indicator shows that Pakistan has shown significant improvement on the public transport indicator, where its current score is above 100. However, the country's score remains below 50 on the domestic and international flights indicator.

During the last 24 hours, the country has reported 1,517 coronavirus cases and 17 deaths. The total number of cases has risen to 966,007 and the death toll is 22,469.

(SAM)