Iceland is famous for its otherworldly beauty. This time, though, it isn’t competing for a beauty title.
The organisation International SOS has crowned it “Miss Safest Country” in the world..
..and that means a green light for you, restless travelling soul, to go and visit it.
Our favourite sights around the world have gradually started welcoming us back, one after the other. It’s true, of course, that a certain caution still hangs over the horizon when it comes to travel. The measures governments have taken certainly affect the everyday life we had grown used to until now. Even a stroll through the markets of a European city can mean keeping our distance and following the rules each country has set.
If there is one destination, however, that can turn into the perfect escape from Covid-19, it’s Iceland. It has recently earned plenty of praise for how it managed the crisis and handled the coronavirus. That’s how it kept its outbreak under control — and without imposing drastic, extreme measures.
How did it pull this off?
Iceland began tackling Covid-19 back in February — well before the first confirmed case reached the island. On top of that, it carried out mass, large-scale testing, even on people who showed no symptoms of the virus. Tellingly, it has performed more tests per capita than any other country! By identifying and isolating those who tested positive for Covid-19, Iceland managed to avoid a general lockdown. At the same time, it limited the spread. The result is a nation with only 1,802 cases and 10 deaths. The estimated fatality rate from the virus is 0.6% — far lower than that of France, Italy or Sweden.
Even though Iceland has proven many times that it is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, with undeniable, otherworldly beauty (see why here), this time it challenges us to admire it for a different reason — the one that names it the safest country in the world to travel to, as awarded by the organisation International SOS.
The organisation International SOS has created an interactive map that forecasts the safest and most dangerous places around the world for travel of every kind, based on each country’s infrastructure as well as the risks a traveller might face in terms of health and personal security.
All candidate countries are ranked into several risk categories: insignificant, low, medium, high and extreme. Low-risk countries are marked in green, medium-risk in yellow, high-risk in orange and very high-risk in red. Purple marks the countries of “variable” risk.
The organisation International SOS carried out a risk analysis covering:
political violence, social unrest, violent crime, the robustness of public transport, labour relations, the effectiveness of security services, emergency response, and the country’s susceptibility to natural disasters.
Based on all of the above, the Global Peace Index named the following countries as the safest in the world:
The 10 safest countries in the world
Iceland 
New Zealand
Portugal
Austria
Denmark
Canada
Singapore
Slovenia
Japan
Czech Republic
For Iceland, though, this is not the first time it has been handed this title: last year, Global Finance Magazine ranked the island as the “safest country in the world for 2019”, and it had also won the title for 2018 — you can read more about that here.
Iceland’s top spot is anything but a matter of luck. First of all, it has a very low crime rate, a low per-capita homicide rate, and it maintains a developed economy and well-developed healthcare systems. On top of that, it is one of the 10 safest countries for ️LGBTQ travellers on the list “The Most Dangerous (& Safest) Countries for LGBTQ+ Travel in 2019”
For reference only, the most dangerous places on earth for 2020, according to the Travel Risk Map, are Libya and Somalia.
Those last two countries will certainly have to wait a long while before they see us. Iceland, on the other hand — we can’t keep her waiting much longer!
