Sweden ready to change tack in ‘local lockdowns’ as infections rise

Experts say country is shifting towards a new strategy more aligned with neighbouring nations

SWEDEN’S public health agency will tomorrow start working with regions suffering the worst coronavirus outbreaks to bring in local restrictions, as the country toughens its approach to ward off a resurgence in infections.

The rules empower regional health authorities, in consultation with the agency, to instruct citizens to avoid shopping centres, museums, libraries, swimming pools, gyms, sports training, sports matches and concerts.

It also empowers them to instruct people to avoid public transport or to avoid visiting the elderly and others in risk groups.

“It’s more of a lockdown situation – but a local lockdown,” said Johan Nojd, who leads the infectious diseases department in Uppsala, where the number of cases has soared 10-fold in recent weeks, with 185 cases per 100,000 population over the past fortnight.

The number of new cases in Sweden has been climbing since the start of September, with a seven-day average of 65 per million people per day reported to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control on Friday, compared with 71, 40 and 25 in Denmark, Finland and Norway respectively.

Dr Nojd will hold a meeting with Sweden’s state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell tomorrow to discuss which of the available measures to put in place.

He said he was currently considering instructing people not to visit the elderly or others in a risk group, and also to avoid unnecessary journeys, particularly on public transport.

If contract tracing were to show links between infections and other places or activities, he said he would not hesitate to impose further measures.

Bitte Brastad, chief legal officer at the agency, described the new measures as “in between regulations and recommendations”. They are the strongest recommendation the authorities can make but do not bring fines for noncompliance.

Dr Joacim Rocklov, professor of epidemiology at Umea University, said the new local measures showed Sweden quietly shifting strategy.

“What’s happened in the last couple of weeks is a movement towards a similar model to what has been used in Norway and many other countries,” he said.

Dr Rocklov said he believed the resurgence in infections in Stockholm and other cities that suffered many cases in the spring had challenged the Swedish public health agency’s belief that immunity in the population might soon start to suppress the pandemic.

“I think they must have been shocked by that, after all these strong claims that we were closing in on immunity in April and May. They must have realised that that’s not really the case.”

Dr Tegnell said on Thursday that the autumn resurgence in infections had changed his agency’s understanding.

“I think the obvious conclusion is that the level of immunity in those cities is not at all as high as we, as maybe some people, have believed,” he said.

A preprint study published last week by Stockholm University maths professor Tom Britton – one of Sweden’s foremost epidemiological modellers – found that even with more than 20 per cent of the city’s population immune, the city still needed to impose preventive measures to prevent a resurgence in cases. “There is still a substantial risk for future outbreaks in Sweden,” he said.

Yesterday global coronavirus cases rose by more than 400,000 for the first time, a record one-day increase.