No lockdown, but Sweden’s death toll soars in care homes

IT WAS about a month after elder care homes in Sweden banned visitors in March that Björn Bränngård, a local politician in the north of Stockholm, got a call from one of the nurses looking after his 96-year-old mother.

“The nurse asked me, ‘Can we move your mother to another section?’ And I said, ‘Why?’ And she said, ‘Because it’s only her and one other person who is still alive. Everyone else is dead.” Less than a fortnight later Mr Bränngård’s mother was dead, too.

Sweden’s state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, has said that the success or failure of the country’s less restrictive coronavirus strategy depends almost entirely on whether the authorities can get the number of infections in care homes under control.

Last week, a union health-and-safety officer reported the home where Mr Bränngård’s mother had been, Berga Elderly Care, to the authorities because 27 of its 96 residents had died in less than a month, at the same time as half of the home’s staff were off sick.

Berga is perhaps the most shocking case of a situation seen all over Sweden. Coronavirus infections have been reported in more than three-quarters of care homes in Stockholm. Nearly two thirds of the 2,941 who have died in the country with the virus have been over 80. Ninety per cent are over 70, while just under half, 948 people, were living in care homes.

If the authorities fail to get a grip on the situation, Tom Britton, a mathematics professor at Stockholm University, estimates that the final death toll could sit between 8,000 and 20,000.

“If it stays at the same level as it is now, with a high transmission within elderly care homes, then [Britton’s estimate] is unfortunately probably right,” Mr Tegnell said.

“But given how much work is going on in elderly care homes, we can reasonably expect to reduce that spread.”