Australia has been ranked eighth place globally for its effective handling of the CCP virus with New Zealand claiming the top spot. The COVID performance index, released today by Sydney-based think tank Lowy Institute, compared and ranked the handling of COVID-19 by 98 countries based on publicly available data. Australia was surpassed by New Zealand, Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand, Cyprus, Rwanda and Iceland. Majority of the top-ranking countries were those with smaller populations, except Vietnam, which has a population of 96 million people and Thailand with a population of almost 70 million. Authors of the research project, Alyssa Leng and Hervé Lemahieu, found that population size revealed the most significant differences in countries’ experiences when combatting the CCP virus. India, the world’s second most populated country was ranked 86th, one place after Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country. The world’s most populous country, China, where the virus originated from, was …