Who’s Succeeding Against the Coronavirus and Why

Eight months after the coronavirus outbreak was declared a global health emergency, countries around the world have seen vastly different results from their efforts to fight the pandemic. The outcomes have been driven by factors both in and out of the control of individual nations, with some common threads emerging:

While countries have adopted a variety of strategies, they basically boil down to finding out who is currently infected (testing and tracing) and minimizing the risk that the virus spreads (isolating, quarantining and taking other preventive measures). Early on, many places that responded most effectively were those that had learned tough lessons from the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which like the new coronavirus originated in China. Taiwan, for example, managed to stamp out locally transmitted coronavirus infections in April by deploying early health screening of visitors, along with thorough testing and contact tracing. It helped that in many Asian nations, widespread use of medical masks became common after the SARS outbreak.