Sweden realises that it’s not a nation apart after all
Sweden’s belief in gentle guidance over hard lockdowns has been branded a ‘big failure’, as cases soar and hospital admissions double by the week.
Alarm is rising in Sweden that its light touch approach to Covid-19 has failed as its per capita infection rate rises above Britain’s, with the number of hospital admissions almost doubling each week.
“The situation is serious,” Goran Hansson, a cardiology professor at the Karolinska Institute and head of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, said.
“Intensive care units are not at maximum capacity but may become full soon if the trend is not broken.”
Since the start of the pandemic the Swedish “experiment” has raised profound questions about the best way to overcome the disease and the nature of the state’s duties to its citizens.
Critics of Anders Tegnell, the state epidemiologist in charge of the response, and his advisers believe it is finally clear that Sweden has paid too high a price for too few tangible results.
Sweden alone did not impose a lockdown or establish a national contact tracing system for months.
It did not recommend the use of face masks, even in hospitals, or stop people visiting their relatives in care homes until the start of April.
What it did do was close universities and sixth-form colleges; ban events involving more than 50 people; and advise the population to practise hygiene and social distancing – to work from home, wash their hands and to isolate themselves if they felt ill.
By late summer cases were so low that Kim Sneppen, a Danish biostatistician, who had published a paper on Sweden’s coronavirus policies, told a newspaper that the pandemic “may be finished” in the country. Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of Tesla, tweeted: “Sweden was right.”
Yet in the second wave infection rates are high even in thinly populated areas.
Stefan Lofven, the prime minister, said compliance with public health recommendations had fallen markedly since the spring.
Cecilia Soderberg-Naucler, a virology professor at Karolinska Institute, said: “We had to get into deep shit before people sharpened up. There’s a lot of egoistic behaviour and not thinking about friends and family members.”
Now, all but one of Sweden’s 21 regions are in voluntary lockdown with residents urged to cut social contact by avoiding public transport or travelling out of their area.
From Saturday pubs and restaurants will be banned from selling alcohol after 10pm. Public gatherings will be limited to eight people.
Sweden’s GDP is expected to fall by 3.4 per cent in 2020, compared with Denmark at – 3.9 per cent and Finland at -4.3 per cent.
Professor Anders Vahlne, who sits on the steering committee for Vetenskapsforum Covid-19, an organisation calling for tougher measures, said: “[The strategy] was a big failure. We are reporting as many deaths as we did in the spring. There is a nationalistic pride that’s been hurt.”
Sweden’s belief in itself as a country apart, in which gentle guidance is preferable to hard rules, is being tested.
“We’re not going to be the same people [after] this,” Professor Soderberg- Naucler said. “We’ve had some kind of view that we know better than others and of course we don’t. We are all equal before this virus.”
The Times
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