Has Sweden’s strategy to fight the Covid-19 pandemic work? / Article / LSM.lv

For the first time since March, the incidence of Covid-19 in Sweden has been lower than that of its Scandinavian neighbors. This is an important argument for those who support the Swedish approach coronavirus control – without imposing strict restrictive measures and without stopping the economy. –

According to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control data, Sweden recorded an average of 12 new infections per million population in the previous week, compared with 18 in Denmark and 14 in Norway.

The graph curve moves down

The number of deaths with Covid-19 in Sweden is currently two to three a day, compared to a peak of more than a hundred a day in mid-April.

Stockholm, the epicenter of the pandemic in Sweden in April and May, had the lowest number of new infections in the previous week, with a positive result of 14,000 tests. found 250 people.

Moreover, a test performed on 2,500 randomly selected Swedish people in the previous week showed that none of them had active coronavirus infection, compared with 0.9% at the end of April and 0.3% at the end of May. Epidemiologists tend to see this as evidence that there is currently no widespread infection in the country among people without severe symptoms.

Meanwhile, 179 new infections were registered in Denmark last Friday, the highest number of new infections per day in more than four months.

“Sweden has become one of the countries with the highest number of Covid-19 cases in Europe, one of the countries with the lowest number of Covid-19 cases in Europe, while many other countries are experiencing a fairly rapid increase.” announced Anders Tegnells, the country’s chief epidemiologist.

If you compare Covid-19 morbidity schedule In Sweden, Norway and Denmark, it can be clearly seen that in the first days of September, the Swedish curve for the first time “plunges” below the lines of Scandinavia’s neighboring schedules.

Hope for conscientiousness

Sweden, unlike Denmark and Norway, did not impose strict containment measures, and kindergartens, most schools, bars, restaurants, shops and offices were open throughout the pandemic. The Swedish Public Health Agency concluded in the process of developing the Covid-19 strategy that it was better to rely on voluntary social exclusion and self-isolation measures that could be maintained over a long period of time.

“Now we see that the results of our strategy are getting better noticeably slower, but in the end it gives positive results, ”said Tegnells.

The decline in Covid-19 cases in Sweden is now particularly marked, with many European countries that had introduced strict containment measures in the spring showing an increase in morbidity following their abolition. At the same time, protests are growing in Europe, even against the few restrictions that are still in place. This makes it particularly problematic to be able to set strict limits again if the second wave of the pandemic starts this autumn.

Collective immunity

Sweden currently has 5,832 deaths with Covid-19, more than six times more than Denmark (628) and Norway (264) combined. Sweden still has fewer tests per capita than Denmark and Norway, averaging 1.2 per 1,000 people at the end of last month, compared with 2.2 in Norway and 5.9 in Denmark.

On 3 September, the Swedish Public Health Agency published a new study on antibody levels among blood donors. This showed that the proportion of antibodies at national level had been rising slowly since March, reaching around 7% of the population by the end of June (around 12% in Stockholm).

“The most important thing we are currently seeing is that the number of infected people continues to fall. This trend can be explained by the fact that we already have a fairly large part of the population that has immunity, ”says Tegnells.

The Swedish epidemiologist will work for the WHO

One of the authors of the Swedish strategy to combat the chronavirus epidemic is Johan Gīzeke, who was the country’s chief epidemiologist from 1995 to 2005. He was one of the biggest opponents of the strict restrictions, expressing confidence that a large part of the population would still be infected and ill with Covid-19. “Strict containment measures will only prevent, but not prevent, serious cases of Covid-19 in the future,” said Gizeke. in the articlepublished in the May issue of the authoritative medical journal The Lancet.

At the end of August, Gizeke took a leading position in the World Health Organization (WHO) – he was elected as Vice-Chair of the WHO Strategic and Advisory Group on the Threat of Infection (STAG-IH). This position will give the chief architect of Sweden’s approach to containing the pandemic a key role in influencing the WHO’s future strategy for developing Covid-19, allows British media The Telegraph.

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