Sweden: Was it a mistake to buck the lockdown trend?
Faced with a steady increase in Covid-19 cases, Sweden is tweaking its “lighttouch approach” to the pandemic, said Jon Henley in The Guardian (U.K.). Unlike other European countries, Sweden has not ordered a total lockdown. High schools and colleges have gone online, but elementary schools, restaurants, shops, and offices have all remained open—although Swedes have been strongly encouraged to practice social distancing and to telecommute if possible. The country’s government says the aim of this relaxed strategy is to slow, not fully stop, the spread of the virus, thereby preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed and the economy from collapsing. At first the strategy seemed to be a tremendous success, but the country’s death toll has risen in recent weeks to 2,200, far higher than in neighboring countries. The government is now toughening its Covid-19 response. Authorities in Stockholm last week abruptly shuttered five restaurants that had failed to keep tables far enough apart, “only allowing customers time to finish their food before obliging them to leave.” Foreign Minister Ann Linde said the closures sent a signal: “These are not voluntary measures. You are meant to follow them.”
The problem with the Swedish strategy is that no one considered what it would mean for our most vulnerable citizens, said Susanna Birgersson in Expressen (Sweden). “The coronavirus is now ravaging the elderly” because the government failed to implement health safeguards at nursing homes, which account for at least half of all Sweden’s coronavirus deaths. “Many of us know someone who passed away from Covid-19,” said Peter Wolodarski in Dagens Nyheter (Sweden). Last Sunday, this paper ran 10 pages of obituaries instead of the usual four. And because nursing-home visits were prohibited in early April as part of a belated attempt to protect the elderly, children cannot say goodbye to their ailing parents. “Dad had to die alone, as nobody should have to die,” Stockholm resident Lili Sedghi said of her 92-year-old father. And things could get even worse. Per Follin, head of infection control in Stockholm, has warned that the capital is at a tipping point. “If we do not turn this around,” he said, “there will be a deterioration and increased spread of infection.”
It’s too early to tell whether Sweden’s gamble will pay off, said Ross Clark in The Spectator (U.K.). On the evidence so far, you could argue either way. Sweden has suffered some 233 Covid-19 deaths per million people, far more than Nordic nations with lockdowns—Denmark has seen about 75 deaths per million, Norway 38, Finland 35—“but a long way short of other European countries.” The U.K. has registered 311 deaths per million, France 357, Italy 446, and Spain 510. Some epidemiologists believe that most countries will ultimately end up with similar death rates after multiple waves of the disease wash through and herd immunity slowly builds up. Sweden, though, “might just have a bit more of an economy left.”