Results are in on Scandi neighbours’ wildly diferent virus strategies
They have a similar public trust in government, similar social structures, demographics and health systems, but wildly different coronavirus strategies.
Denmark locked down hard and early, shutting schools, borders, cafes, restaurants and shops. Sweden has taken a light-touch approach, shutting none of these things, and instead relying on the public’s “common sense behaviour”.
Last Thursday, the two countries’ health agencies both published their report cards, giving estimates on what difference their contrasting approaches had made to the rate at which the infection is spreading — the famous “R” number. The result? Not that much.
If R is down to one, it means each person infected goes on to infect an average of one other person during the course of their illness. So long as a country keeps R below one, the number of infections will decrease until the pandemic comes to an end.
The Public Health Institute of Sweden estimated that Sweden’s R number has fallen from 1.4 at the start of April to 0.85 at the end of April.
Denmark’s SSI infectious diseases agency, meanwhile, estimated that Denmark’s had fallen from about one at the start of April to about 0.9 at the end of the month.
On the face of it, it looks like Sweden — without ever imposing a lockdown — has done a slightly better job at slowing the rate of spread.
Researchers at Imperial College predicted Sweden’s approach would leave it with an R of above three, leading to 40,000 coronavirus deaths by May 1. Sweden’s current death tally is 2854.
So did Danes endure their long, strange month of home-schooling, home-working and zero social life for nothing? Not quite.
Denmark’s much heavier lockdown helped push the R number as low as 0.6 in mid-April, only creeping back to 0.9 after it opened schools on April 15 — although the increase may have more to do with the weather and the effects of lockdown fatigue. Denmark’s death toll stands at 503.
Sweden, on the other hand, saw an early and sudden peak in mid-March, when the infection rate briefly peaked above three, and then a steady slow decline through April, with the rate only falling consistently below one after April 19. This apparent, small difference has had a big impact in terms of hospital admissions and deaths: Sweden’s cumulative coronavirus death rate, at 274 deaths per million inhabitants, is now triple that of Denmark.
But as Sweden’s Public Health Institute has maintained from the start, coronavirus will be with us for much longer than the month or so a country can maintain a full lockdown.
Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, now estimates that as many as a quarter of people in Stockholm might already be immune. The capital might have herd immunity within weeks, he argues. This doesn’t say anything about the rest of Sweden. Wennergren warns that the sub-one R number for Sweden as a whole might be heavily weighed down by a high immunity in Stockholm, masking a rapid spread elsewhere.
“We could end up on the other side of the Stockholm peak and think we’re doing fine, and instead get a wave-like plateau that is a result of different regions overlapping,” he said.