Israel ranked safest, US and UK riskiest places during pandemic

April 14, 2020

Hong Kong financial group says Israel is still the safest country, though it came in 8th place in treatment efficiency.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

A small Hong Kong-based venture capital fund Tuesday published results of its latest study of how countries are coping with the coronavirus pandemic and said Israel maintained its No. 1 ranking as the safest country.

“Israel is ranked again at the first position in the safety ranking, and increased its cumulative score by 13 points,” said Dmitry Kaminskiy, founder of Deep Knowledge Ventures.

DKV said its study of 150 countries was based on publicly available data from the World Health Organization and other sources.

While Israel ranked No. 1 in safety, it came in 8th place in treatment efficiency and 11th in the level of government support. Germany, China and South Korea were the top three countries for treatment efficiency while Germany, the US and Japan got top ranking for government support.

Italy was ranked the riskiest country in the world with the U.S. second, Britain third and Spain fourth. Despite their high risk rating, DKV ranked the U.S. and Britain 2nd and 4th for most supportive governments.

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Kaminsky said the assessment of government support was based on what measures those countries implemented to support their citizens, small and medium businesses, the self-employed and some other entities like tax relief and additional support.

“Among those countries, the U.S. and UK provided quite a substantial amount of budget and combination of other beneficial support measures compared to other countries,” Kaminsky said.

“It is very logical that countries having significant economic power but who did not succeed in preventing the spread of the pandemic early enough should provide the greatest level of economic support for their citizens and SMEs. ”

In a televised press conference Monday at which he announced a nationwide curfew for the end of the Passover holiday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the rankings to bolster his position.

“I must tell you that we have had great success in this war. Israel is ranked among the safest countries in the world in all indicators relative to its population,” Netanyahu said.

The rankings were dismissed by Prof. Yitzhak Ben-Israel, who said “a small, almost unknown venture capital fund” was putting out fake news.

“It is a wild exaggeration to say that we are the world leader. It depends on who you want to compare us with,” Ben-Israel, a retired army general who heads the Cyber Research Center at Tel Aviv University told Ynet.

“I call on the public – check the data and judge for yourself,” Ben-Israel said. “On one hand the picture is rosy that we are talking about 50 days since the first patient was discovered in Israel and there are about 100 dead, but on a normal day, every normal day 120 people die in Israel, so is that good or not good?”