Swedes urged to shape up as cases rise “
SWEDEN’S prime minister has told his country to prepare for thousands of deaths as the country faces a backlash over its light-touch response to the coronavirus crisis.
Stefan Löfven said: “We will have more seriously ill people who need intensive care”, but played down the distinctiveness of Sweden’s approach.
Swedes have been advised to practise social distancing, but schools, bars and restaurants remain open.
Thousands of doctors and academics, including the head of the Nobel Foundation, have signed a petition urging tougher action, while one scientist accused Sweden of playing “Russian roulette with the Swedish population”.
Sweden’s Social Democrat-led coalition says it lacks a sufficient legal mandate to be able to react rapidly to the pandemic, which has killed more than 400 people in Sweden and nearly 65000 globally.
Sweden’s government said parliament would be given the chance to approve individual measures “as soon as possible” after they were imposed. It also said the new legislation would not give it the power to declare martial law. The government is asking parliament to grant it wider executive powers for three months.
Rather than ordering a lockdown, Sweden has told its citizens to “each take responsibility” for slowing the spread. Gatherings have been cut to 50. Only the most vulnerable citizens have been encouraged to self-isolate at home, while visits to nursing homes have been banned. Restaurants, bars and primary schools remain open, and the streets of Stockholm are quieter than usual but far from a ghost town.
“Everyone is responsible for their own well-being, for their neighbours and their own local community,” said Foreign Minister Ann Linde.
Linde said public trust was a key element of Sweden’s strategy.
The government-backed Public Health Agency of Sweden said Swedes had enough common sense to practise social distancing of their own volition.
However, the tone has shifted as
EPA cases begin to mount. Sweden’s death toll is at 401, with 6830 confirmed infections. In the past week, the infection tally increased by an average of 447 a day, compared to an average 256 the previous week.
The figures are probably higher, as only patients admitted to hospital and health care personnel are being tested.
Health-care services have reported shortages in equipment. However, Stockholm plans to open its first field hospital this weekend amid a sharp rise in cases in the capital.
Last week, the head of the Nobel
Foundation, Carl-Henrik Heldin, was among over 2 000 physicians and academics who penned an open letter urging Sweden to shape up. Some even demanded Stockholm, the capital, be locked down after some 50 senior citizens died in care homes from the virus.
But public health officials have expressed scepticism about the viability of lengthy lockdowns.
PM Löfven has warned that although the pandemic’s hold on Sweden was slower than in Italy and Spain, it did not mean fewer deaths.
‘We will have more seriously ill people who need intensive care,” he said. “We are facing thousands of deaths. We need to prepare for that.
“We’re doing it in a different way. Sometimes that is because we are in difference phases (of the pandemic).”
There are signs the tide is turning. Some institutions, such as the Abba Museum, closed of their own volition, and high schools and universities are moving teaching online.
Authorities have stepped up pleas to Swedes to stay home for Easter.
Professor of endocrinology at the Karolinska Institute, Olle Kampe, said the government had permitted the virus to spread in hopes of reaching herd immunity.
Herd immunity is achieved when so many people are immune to the virus that it cannot spread.
But Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist heading a coronavirus strategy, said: “We’ve already taken the most important measures. Stay home if you feel ill; work from home if you can; and ensure that we protect our older fellow citizens.
“You could alter other rules, such as those governing trips to the restaurant or gatherings, but you get the best effect when everyone simply sticks to the basic code of conduct.”
Associate professor of political science at Sodertorn University in Stockholm, Nicholas Aylott, chimed in, saying Sweden’s strategy had been in part rooted in a national “exceptionalism” – a younger and healthier population than other European countries. |
The best effect is when everyone sticks to the basic code of conduct