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Sweden’s king has admitted that the Scandinavian country has failed with its coronavirus strategy, leaving it with a far higher death toll from the pandemic than its Nordic neighbors.
Carl XVI Gustaf told the Swedes in his annual Christmas address that the country had suffered “enormously under difficult conditions” and that it was “traumatic” that many relatives of the nearly 8,000 people who died with Covid-19 had not been able to say goodbye to them. .
“I think we have failed. We have many who have died and that is terrible. It is something that we all have to suffer, ”added the king, in comments published on Thursday and which will be broadcast in full on Monday.
The Swedish Covid-19 strategy of light touch without formal blocking, no recommendations for the use of face masks and weaker quarantine rules than in other parts of Europe has been the subject of intense international debate. Many opponents of closed closures have cited Sweden and its ability to keep its schools and economy open.
But domestic support for Sweden’s strategy has fallen in recent months as the country has been hit hard by the second wave of Covid-19. State epidemiologist Anders Tegnell argued during the spring and summer that Sweden would be spared compared to neighboring Finland and Norway due to the increased immunity provided by the first wave.
The opposite happened: Sweden reported around 1,700 Covid deaths in the last month compared to about 100 in Finland and Norway, each of which has half the population of Sweden.
An opinion poll for the newspaper Dagens Nyheter on Thursday showed that support for the Swedish public health agency and Tegnell continued to fall, but remained at higher levels than other countries had for their officials. The proportion of Swedes who had great faith in the agency fell 7 percentage points to 52 percent, while support for Tegnell fell 6 percentage points to 59 percent.
Sweden’s Covid strategy also came under fire this week for initial findings from the independent commission investigating how the country handled the pandemic. His report said that current and former Swedish governments were primarily responsible for the Scandinavian country’s failure to protect its elders.
When asked if he was afraid of contracting coronavirus, the 74-year-old king said: “Lately, it’s been feeling more noticeable. It has gotten closer and closer. That’s not what you want. “
Stockholm, Sweden’s capital, and some other regions are about to run out of intensive care beds, prompting authorities to activate a national escalation plan, while Finland and Norway have offered medical assistance. The government is also working on a temporary law giving it greater authority to order shutdowns, but it is not likely to come into power until mid-March. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2020
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