In her 4pm statement to the nation on Wednesday the Prime Minister (our single source of truth) said this:
Our testing has scaled up and we have now tested over 85,000 New Zealanders, one of the highest testing rates per capita in the world.
Where are we on the world rankings for testing? Fortunately there are websites that measure and compare such things.
So we are beating Australia – that’s good, we like to do that. But we are at number 31 in the world. There are about 195 countries in the world so that puts us in the top 16%.
However, I think it is fair to dispose of a few of those in the list above New Zealand: Faroe, Falkland and Channel Islands, Gibraltar, Malta, Luxembourg, San Marino, Isle of Man, Brunei, Liechtenstein, Andorra and Greenland so that moves us up to 18th in the world.
Is that “one of the highest”? How far down the list does “one of the highest” extend?
Populated, developed countries that have a higher per capita testing result than New Zealand are UAE, Israel, Norway, Switzerland, Lithuania, Portugal, Italy, Qatar, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Spain and Ireland.
Counted that way we are 14th in the world; so let’s be generous and claim 14th highest.
We were distraught when we were second in the world in the Rugby World Cup so does 14th cut it?
If you enjoyed this BFD article please consider sharing it with your friends.
