Vilified Early Over Lax Virus Strategy, Sweden Seems to Have Scourge Controlled (Published 2020)
After having weathered high death rates when it resisted a lockdown in the spring, Sweden now has one of Europe’s lowest rates of daily new cases. Whether that is an aberration remains to be seen.
Normalcy has never been more contentious than in Sweden. Almost alone in the Western world, the Swedes refused to impose a coronavirus lockdown last spring, as the country’s leading health officials argued that limited restrictions were sufficient and would better protect against economic collapse.
It was an approach that transformed Sweden into an unlikely ideological lightning rod. Many scientists blamed it for a spike in deaths, even as many libertarians critical of lockdowns portrayed Sweden as a model. During a recent Senate hearing in Washington, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the leading U.S. infectious disease specialist, and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, angrily clashed over Sweden.
For their part, the Swedes admit to making some mistakes, particularly in nursing homes, where the death toll was staggering. Indeed, comparative analyses show that Sweden’s death rate at the height of the pandemic in the spring far surpassed the rates in neighboring countries and was more protracted. (Others point out that Sweden’s overall death rate is comparable to that of the United States.)
Now, though, the question is whether the country’s current low caseload, compared with sharp increases elsewhere, shows that it has found a sustainable balance, something that all Western countries are seeking eight months into the pandemic — or whether the recent numbers are just a temporary aberration.
“It looks positive,” said Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, who gained global fame and notoriety for having kept Sweden out of lockdown in March.
With a population of 10.1 million, Sweden averaged just over 200 new cases a day for several weeks, though in recent days that number has jumped to about 380. The per capita rate is far lower than nearby Denmark or the Netherlands (if higher than the negligible rates in Norway and Finland). Sweden is also doing far better, for the moment, than Spain, with 10,000 cases a day, and France, with 12,000.
Critics say Sweden does not test for the virus as thoroughly as many other nations — with 142,000 tests for the week ending Sept. 13. Britain, with about six times the population, tested only 587,000 people in the most recent week, far less per capita than Sweden. And Britain conducted far more tests than France, Germany or Spain in that period.
In early September, 1.2 percent of tests in Sweden were positive, compared with about 7 percent currently in Northwest England, Britain’s hardest-hit area.
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“Today, all of the European countries are more or less following the Swedish model, combined with the testing, tracing and quarantine procedures the Germans have introduced, but none will admit it,” said Antoine Flahault, director of the Institute of Global Health, in Geneva. “Instead, they made a caricature out of the Swedish strategy. Almost everyone has called it inhumane and a failure.”
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Mr. Tegnell said that Sweden would in certain cases prescribe face masks, particularly to contain local outbreaks. And in a break from the past, he told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper that he would now even consider limited, local restrictions on movement and school closures.
But he still insists that distancing provided overall better protection than masks, which he says could give people a false sense of security.
Mr. Tegnell stressed, as he has many times before, that Sweden did not set out to achieve “herd immunity,” calling it a “myth that has been created.”
“We are happy that the number of cases is going down rapidly and we do believe immunity in the population has something to do with that,” he said in the interview, conducted just before the case numbers rose slightly. “And we hope that the immunity in the population will help us get thought this fall with cases at a low level.”
