Swedish chief ’s emails open new row over schools

SWEDEN’S state epidemiologist suggested to his Finnish counterpart that keeping schools open might spread the virus faster and speed up the path towards herd immunity.

The email, obtained by a Swedish journalist under freedom of information laws, appears to contradict Dr Anders Tegnell’s public assurances about school closures and Sweden’s controversial low-restriction coronavirus strategy.

In an email sent on March 14, three days before Sweden closed upper secondary schools and universities,

Dr Tegnell wrote to Mika Salminen, his Finnish counterpart, suggesting that allowing the disease to spread among children might be desirable.

“One might speak for keeping schools open in order to reach herd immunity more quickly,” Dr Tegnell wrote.

Mr Salminen replied: “We have also considered that, but over time the children are still going to spread the infection.”

“True,” Dr Tegnell replies, “but probably mostly to each other because of the extremely age-stratified contact structure we have.” Dr Tegnell has consistently argued in public that as well as being generally asymptomatic, children do not spread coronavirus to any great degree, even to each other.

The email suggests that, at least in the first half of March, this was not something he was wholly convinced of, because if that were the case, keeping schools open would have little impact on levels of immunity.

Four days later, Dr Tegnell said on Swedish state television that he didn’t think children spread coronavirus.

“When we ask around in China we find that they haven’t been able to see any spread from children,” he said. “That doesn’t mean children don’t get it at all, but they don’t seem to spread it.”

When approached for comment, Dr Tegnell argued that he had been discussing possibilities, not expectations, in his email to Mr Salminen. “My comments were about a possible effect, not an expected one, which was a part of the assessment of the suitability of the measure,” he said.

“Keeping schools open to achieve herd immunity was therefore never current [as a strategy].”