New Zealand tops Lowy Institute list as country with best response to coronavirus, Australia and Sri Lanka sits eighth and tenth.

New analysis has found that New Zealand has handled the coronavirus pandemic more effectively than any other country in the world.

Australian think tank the Lowy Institute has crunched reams of data to produce a new interactive that assesses the coronavirus response of almost 100 nations.

So when the Lowy Institute released its analysis of the countries with most effective pandemic response some were surprised to see Australia in to the 8th and Sri Lanka at number 10. 

Researchers tracked COVID-19 case numbers in each country, as well as confirmed deaths and testing rates.

While New Zealand took top spot, it was closely followed by Vietnam, Taiwan and Thailand, which were ranked second, third and fourth, respectively.

Australia also performed strongly and was ranked eighth in the world by the Lowy Institute. Sri Lanka ranked Tength in the list.

The United States has been ravaged by the pandemic and languishes near the bottom of the table, at number 94. Indonesia and India did not perform much better, sitting at numbers 85 and 86, respectively.

Lowy did not rate China's response to the pandemic, citing a lack of publicly available testing data.

Folowing table provides a ranked comparison of the average performance over time of countries in managing the COVID-19 pandemic in the 36 weeks following their hundredth confirmed case of the virus. Detail list available from

https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/covid-performance/#region

The Institute's Herve Lemahieu said the interactive showed that smaller countries had typically tackled COVID-19 more effectively than big countries.

Mr Lemahieu said the data also disproved the theory that authoritarian regimes had managed the crisis more effectively than democracies.

"Authoritarian regimes, on average, started off better — they were able to mobilise resources faster, and lockdowns came faster," Mr Lemahieu said.

"But to sustain that over time was more difficult for them."

In contrast, many democracies initially responded poorly to the pandemic before "improving remarkably" after the first wave.

But some major democratic nations — including the United States and the United Kingdom — then failed to capitalise on that progress because they failed to impose sufficiently strict health measures.

Mr Lemahieu said the countries at the top of the list included liberal democracies, authoritarian and hybrid regimes, but all enjoyed the benefits of effective institutions.

He said wealthier countries had typically managed the outbreak more effectively than poorer countries, but then lost their lead by the end of 2020 as infections again surged in places like Europe and North America.

"One of the remarkable findings of this study is that there has been more or less a level playing field between developing and rich countries, because measures needed to stem the virus have been quite low tech," he said.

But Mr Lemahieu predicted that poorer countries would soon lose ground as they struggled to obtain COVID-19 vaccines for their citizens.

- With inputs from ABC and Lowy Institute Website