user: In a project aimed at providing near real-time dashboards for COVID-19 statistics across European countries, starting with China, I need to ensure the data retrieval process is optimized for speed to maintain data freshness. Using 'YOUR-RAPID-API-KEY' as my RapidAPI key and 'covid-193.p.rapidapi.com' as the host, how do I configure the request to not exceed 5 seconds, and what other request optimization techniques can be applied to ensure the fastest possible data retrieval?

Available functions:
name: requests.get
description: Sends a GET request to the specified URL.
parameters: type: dict
properties: url: type: string
description: Get statistics for all countries about COVID-19
default: https://covid-193.p.rapidapi.com/statistics
headers: properties: X-RapidAPI-Key: type: string
description: The API key for authenticating requests to RapidAPI.
X-RapidAPI-Host: type: string
description: The host domain for the RapidAPI service being accessed.
type: dict
required: X-RapidAPI-Key
X-RapidAPI-Host
timeout: type: integer
description: How many seconds to wait for the server to send data before giving up.
params: properties: country: type: string
description: Name of the country to retrieve data for. Use '[All]' to indicate a global history request.
type: dict
allow_redirects: type: boolean
description: A Boolean to enable/disable redirection.
default: yes
auth: type: tuple
description: A tuple to enable a certain HTTP authentication.
default: None
items: type: string
cert: type: string
description: A String or Tuple specifying a cert file or key.
default: None
cookies: type: dict
additionalProperties: type: string
description: Dictionary of cookies to send with the request.
proxies: type: dict
additionalProperties: type: string
description: Dictionary of the protocol to the proxy url.
stream: type: boolean
description: A Boolean indication if the response should be immediately downloaded (False) or streamed (True).
default: no
verify: type: string
description: A Boolean or a String indication to verify the servers TLS certificate or not.
default: yes
required: url