Iceland has achieved something no other country has: tested 10% of its population for coronavirus, a figure far higher than anywhere else in the world.
No country or scientist or doctor has all the answers about the pandemic that has swept the globe, infecting more than 1.6 million people and killing at least 95,000.
But some places, such as tiny Iceland, Europe’s most sparsely populated country – pop. 364,134, broadly equivalent to the number of people in Tulsa, Oklahoma – may be better placed to deliver some types of coronavirus information, and even answers than most, at least in the short term, according to public health experts, international government officials and others involved in responding to the outbreak.
“The size of a place matters. It tracks with the number of introductions of the virus. It is no coincidence the places now doing (the best work) share this feature,” said William Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard University’s T.N. Chan School of Public Health.
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