A year after coronavirus spread to most of Europe and North America, we can take stock of the economic league table. Even more important are the lessons we should learn from economic performance in 2020 for the remainder of the pandemic because, sadly, Covid-19 has not finished with us yet.

For countries where quarterly data exists for the whole of 2020, there is a remarkable difference between China, at the top of the league, producing 6.5 per cent more goods and services at the end of last year than in the same quarter of 2019 and Spain, currently bottom, where output dropped 9.1 per cent.

The patterns from the data have become clearer through the year. Countries that controlled the virus best enjoyed enviable economic performance, such as the Asian economies of China, Japan and South Korea, or Norway in Europe. The reason is obvious: if you do better with the virus, the need for mandatory or voluntary restrictions on daily activity decreases.