• Sweden takes different approach to virus,
As countries around the world moved quickly to lock down businesses, restaurants and schools as models projected bleak outcomes amid the coronavirus outbreak, Sweden chose to take a different route.
The country instead opted to stay open, implement soft regulations and place trust in its public to practice social distancing on their own, according to Dr. Anders Tegnell, the state epidemiologist of Sweden’s Public Health Agency.
“In general, we said we don’t want to lock down the whole thing,” Dr. Tegnell said late last week during a webinar hosted by the International Center for Journalists. “We want to sort of close down and minimize the transmission in areas where we know that there’s high risk of transmission.”
Sweden’s ability to stay open was allowed by its capacity to perform the appropriate amount of testing in the early stages of the outbreak and by its governmental structure that encourages employees who are sick to stay home, Dr. Tegnell said.
“We were testing a lot very early on because we saw the epidemic coming,” he said.
But despite acknowledgements for the unique response, which has allowed the country’s economy to stay open while others have suffered massive hits, Sweden’s approach to handling the virus hasn’t come without controversy and criticism. Despite being a nation with a total population less than Pennsylvania alone — about 10.2 million people live in Sweden — the Scandinavian country’s death rate is now higher than rate in the United States, which leads the world in cases and has endured more than 78,000 deaths.
Last week, President Donald Trump defended measures taken in the United States in a tweet, writing that Sweden is “paying heavily for its decision not to lock down,” citing the country’s high death rate, which outpaces those of its neighboring Nordic countries.
“The United States made the correct decision,” Mr. Trump wrote on April 30.
Dr. Tegnell admits the death rate “concerns us very much” and has previously called the number “horrifyingly large.” But he also sees signs that the country is past its peak and on its way down with cases.
“The numbers actually are slowly going down,” he said. “The number of cases are slowly going down, especially in the Stockholm area. And our death toll is falling — slowly, but falling.”
Ohio, which has a population of over 11 million, implemented aggressive social distancing measures early on. Gov. Mike DeWine became the first governor in the U.S. to close down K-12 schools even when the state had just five cases, before moving to close businesses and restaurants and implement a stay-at-home order throughout the month of March. As of Friday, Ohio has confirmed 23,016 cases and has reported 1,306 deaths.
In Sweden, 25,921 cases of the virus have been confirmed and 3,220 deaths have been reported. The country’s only social distancing measures put in place were to use remote learning in high schools and colleges and to encourage residents to practice social distancing on their own.
The Swedish government even refrained from encouraging citizens to wear masks, a decision Dr. Tegnell says is twofold.
“The first reason is that the science behind this is not very strong,” he said of masks preventing the spread of the coronavirus, noting that many experts have traced the science back to one single study in Hong Kong.
“You can add to that, Sweden, one of our strong policies has been that if you feel the least bit sick in the morning, stay home,” Dr. Tegnell said. “And we are afraid if we start introducing masks, people will instead of staying home, they will put on the mask and go to work, go out shopping.”
Though the number of cases and deaths in Norway, Finland, Iceland and Denmark are much lower than in Sweden, Dr. Tegnell said early indications show the nation’s immunity rate is much higher — something he says isn’t the only goal in its strategy in dealing with the virus, but something that is pivotal absent a vaccine.
“We’re now getting results from several countries showing that our Nordic neighbors may be 1 to 2% of the population autoimmune, while estimates for Sweden are around 25%,” he said. “So of course, we are much further into this epidemic and much closer to having a level of immunity in the population.”
Dr. Tegnell also isn’t convinced a vaccine will arrive soon, insisting it is “quite far off” — a stark contrast from Mr. Trump’s proclamation that a vaccine would arrive by the end of the year, a position the president later softened when asked about it.
Asked if he believes his response to the coronavirus has been a success, Dr. Tegnell said the Swedish model proves that “you can get very far by voluntary measures.” But he didn’t call it a complete success.
“It’s been successful to a certain extent,” he said. “We’ve managed to have a spread of the disease without overwhelming our health system. It was not successful in protecting our elderly.”
Which countries ultimately got it right will be revealed sometime down the road, Dr. Tegnell said.