[ad_1]
On April 7, the government introduced a bill that allows it to act quickly and make decisions on temporary measures when necessary. Home care visits have been banned since April 1, and the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs asked people to refrain from nonessential travel, adding: “Keep your distance and take personal responsibility.”
By contrast, Denmark has recorded more than seven deaths per 100,000 people, and both Norway and Finland less than four.
The Swedish approach
The scientists added: “The measures should aim to severely limit contact between people in society and greatly increase the ability to screen people for Covid-19 infection.”
“These measures should be implemented as soon as possible, as is currently the case in our neighboring European countries,” they wrote. “Our country should not be an exception to work to stop the pandemic.”
The petition says that trying to “create a collective immunity, in the same way that occurs during an influenza epidemic, has little scientific support.”
Lena Hallengren, Sweden’s Minister of Health and Social Affairs, told CNN: “There is no strategy to create collective immunity in response to Covid-19 in Sweden. Sweden shares the same goals as all other countries: save lives and protect the public health “.
But he said he believed most scientists in Sweden had been “relatively quiet” about the herd’s immunity plan because they thought it might work.
“What is the strategy of the other countries?” I ask. “That [herd immunity] it was the only thing that would finally stop this, unless there is a vaccine in time, which is quite unlikely.
“The truth is that no one, nor anyone in Sweden, nor anyone else anywhere, knows what the best strategy is. Time will tell.”
He said he believed that tighter locks “only serve to flatten the curve and flattening the curve does not mean that cases disappear, they just move on time.”
“And as long as the health system can reasonably cope and provide good care to those who need care, it is not clear that having cases later in time is better.”
Protecting the system
But he added: “I think what failed was that an illness has been transmitted to the care centers for the elderly. As a consequence, we have deaths.”
Hallengren, the Swedish health minister, told CNN: “One of the main concerns now in Sweden is to strengthen protection for those who live in nursing homes.”
She said it was still “too early to draw firm conclusions about the effectiveness of the measures taken in Sweden.”
He said that the fact that Sweden did not have a “total blockade” did not mean “that everything remains the same” and that this measure is “continually reevaluated” with the help of experts “to ensure that the right measures are taken in the right way” . hour.”
Gatherings of more than 50 people are prohibited and people are “highly recommended” to avoid nonessential domestic travel, he added.
“There have been a lot of misunderstandings,” said Ann Linde. “We have more or less the same goals as any other government … And as we have always said, we are perfectly prepared to adopt more binding regulations if the population does not follow us.”
She said the rather high number of deaths “was certainly not part of the plan” and said the large number of deaths in nursing homes was “an area where we have failed.”
He said there were approximately 75 unconfirmed cases for every reported case of Covid-19, but that the peak of infection spread had passed.
Swedish state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell said on Friday that his country would probably be in a better place to resist a second wave of coronavirus because many people in Sweden have now been exposed to the virus.
He told the BBC that the relatively relaxed approach “had worked in some ways” as there were always at least 20% of intensive care beds empty and capable of serving patients with Covid-19.
“We believe we passed the peak of transmission a week ago,” he added.
When asked if Sweden’s approach will help him resist a possible second wave, Tegnell said he believed it would. “It will definitely affect the rate of reproduction and slow down the spread,” he said, but added that it would not be enough to achieve “collective immunity.”
“We know very little about the immunity of this disease, but most experts in Sweden agree that some kind of immunity we will definitely have because many people who have been tested so far have produced antibodies … We hope this will. make it easier for us in the long run. “
When asked if the death toll would have been lower if Sweden had followed the same path as other European countries by introducing strict restrictions, Tegnell replied: “That is a very difficult question to answer at this stage. At least 50% of our death toll is inside “Nursing homes and we have a hard time understanding how a blockage could stop the introduction of the disease into nursing homes.”
Whether the Swedish Covid-19 strategy has been successful or unsuccessful may not be clear in the coming months, but as countries around the world count their dead and wonder if they could have done more to stop the spread of the virus, the world will be watching.
CNN’s Simon Cullen and Ivana Kottasova contributed to the reports.
[ad_2]
