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Sweden has recorded an average of just one Covid 19 death in the past ten days. This is what the director of the national health authority FHM, Johan Carlson, said at a press conference. The number of patients in intensive care units has also decreased significantly. Currently, 13 people continue to receive intensive care throughout the country.
Unlike many other countries in Europe, the number of new infections also remains low, although more are being tested. “In week 36 we had nearly 126,000 tests, of which only 1.2 percent were positive,” Carlson said Tuesday. In the spring, the level had been around 19 percent for weeks.
However: The Robert Koch Institute on Wednesday reported a positive rate of 0.74 percent on a good million tests between Aug. 31 and Sept. 6.
The FHM – so to speak, the Swedish RKI – with state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell had spoken out against blocking the pandemic from the beginning. The country, with its around 10.2 million inhabitants, followed a moderate course, leaving schools until the ninth grade, shops and restaurants open, for example. Instead, the government relied on individual citizen responsibility, as well as rules of distance and good hygiene behavior. Tegnell considers the requirement for a mask superfluous to this day.
Visits to nursing homes are prohibited.
One of the recommendations: Swedes should stay home with the slightest symptoms of illness and generally work from home if possible. This recommendation from the FHM has already been extended to the fall. There was and is an actual ban on visiting nursing homes, which came into effect in early April, too late, as critics complained.
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The strategy behind the course, known internationally as the “Swedish special route”, was and is to focus on slowing down the spread of the virus, as the pathogen cannot be eradicated anyway, as Tegnell repeatedly emphasized.
“People have changed their lives quite dramatically,” Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said last week after a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) in Berlin. It was also too early for a final assessment of the coronavirus crisis, Löfven said. “We may still be in the middle of the pandemic.”
Sweden has a comparatively large number of corona deaths to complain about
For their approach, FHM and Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s red-green minority government were also heavily criticized internationally, especially as the country has a comparatively high number of cases.
As of Wednesday, there have been a total of 5,842 deaths from Covid-19 and 85,880 infections, that is, 175 new positive tests more than the previous day. Estimated for one million inhabitants, Sweden, with 573 deaths and 8,402 infections, is significantly higher than neighboring Denmark (108/3198) and Norway (50/2168) or Germany (113/3058). All these states had been closed.
The number of positive tests in Sweden has been less than 250 on average since the end of August. The clear fall in the curve of the nine infections since the end of June is “the effect of the measures taken, but also the consequence of the peak we have in the previous weeks,” Tegnell told Tagesspiegel.
Those responsible in Sweden attribute the death toll from Covid 19 primarily to the high death rate among those in need of care at the start of the coronavirus crisis. The home death rate was “terrible,” the 64-year-old said. According to official information, almost 80 percent of previous Covid 19 deaths needed attention.
“Our biggest failure was in long-term and elderly care. The regional offices should have been better prepared, then there would have been fewer deaths, “Tegnell said weeks ago. A commission created by the government should investigate this, among other things.
[Mehr zum Thema: Warum Schweden von seiner Strategie überzeugt ist. Lesen Sie hier eine Zwischenbilanz.]
In addition, Tegnell claimed in the initial phase of the pandemic that the number of deaths from Covid 19 would be compared to that of other countries in the course of the pandemic. It remains to be seen if this thesis will come true.
Tegnell expects calm winter with virus in Sweden
The fact is that Sweden is currently in a better position in terms of contagion rate than other European countries such as France, Spain or Italy. These countries imposed a harsh blockade. After easing, the requirements are now tightening again because the number of infections is increasing dramatically and the Paris government also expects the disease to become more serious again.
Tegnell had already expressed the opinion two weeks ago that, in view of the events of recent weeks, Sweden had no reason to fear that the situation would repeat itself as in the spring. “In the fall we will probably have very local shoots,” he said.
Background information on coronavirus:
Local outbreaks must be countered with a clear system of local restrictions, testing and monitoring of the infection chains. The virus will no longer spread across the board. “I’m sure immunity plays a role, but it’s hard to judge how big the ratio is today. It takes more time to analyze this. “
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Tegnell had been repeatedly accused of fighting for the so-called herd immunity for Sweden as quickly as possible, and therefore deliberately risking his life. The epidemiologist had repeatedly denied that this was part of the FHM’s strategy.
It is about keeping the infection process so flat that the healthcare system is not overloaded. As in all other countries, medical staff complained of extreme stress, but intensive care beds were never occupied during the pandemic, also because capacities were expanded.
“Our strategy was consistent and sustainable. We probably have a lower risk of spread than other countries, ”concluded epidemiology professor Jonas Ludvigsson of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. According to him, Sweden is now likely to have higher immunity among the population than most other countries. “I think we are benefiting a lot now,” Ludvigsson emphasized.
