In this paper, we compare the pandemic management performance of 22 countries that belong to the middle-high income class based on criteria including the pandemic data, population characteristics, and health system capacity. The management of the COVID-19 pandemic requires considering many and often conflicting aspects at the same time which necessitates an MCDM approach. We use a standard deviation (SDV) based range of value (ROV) method which coincides with the black-box nature of the disease. The weights obtained from the SDV method reveal that the number of COVID-19 deaths, current health expenditure, and deaths due to cardiovascular diseases are the most important criteria. The ROV method indicates that most Asian countries are ranked in higher positions due to their strong healthcare systems and quick implementation of social distancing rules. The lowest performances belong to Bulgaria, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. They have experienced an elevated number of deaths due to having an elderly population and inefficient usage of healthcare resources. We also show that extreme poverty is an important determinant of country performance. In countries where poverty is higher, as the case with Indonesia, implementing the social distancing rules becomes almost impossible which affects the overall country performance significantly.