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What about if He Sweden It was right? We have tried a lot, in the press review of Messenger Service, of the Swedish road to the Covid-19 epidemic, and many times with critical tones (for example here, where there is also the confrontation with Denmark, and partly also here; while here you can find the article by Sandro Modeo that explains the cultural and historical reasons for the Swedish line). But the new data coming out of Stockholm leads to a reconsideration: whereas in many European countries, in the first place Spain, France and the United Kingdom: Sars-Cov-2 infections have grown exponentially again, in Sweden they remain low. According to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), on Tuesday the total of 14 days of new cases in Scandinavian countries was 22.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, compared to 279 in Spain and 158.5 in France . 118 from the Czech Republic, 77 from Belgium and 59 from the United Kingdom, all cases that this spring have imposed the blockade – writes The Guardian -. Twenty-two of the 31 European countries surveyed by the ECDC had higher infection rates. The new cases, now reported in Sweden only from Tuesday to Friday, are roughly at the rate of the end of March, while data from the National Health Agency showed just 1.2% of the 120,000 tests from last week. positive “.
“We don’t have the resurgence of the disease that many countries have,” he said., in an interview with the station France-24, Anders Tegnell, the country’s leading epidemiologist and who spearheaded the Swedish response to coronavirus. “In the end, we will see what difference it will make to have a more sustainable strategy, that can be sustained for a long time, instead of the strategy of closing, opening and closing over and over again,” he added. In general, in the country there were 5,800 deaths attributed to Covid-19 out of every 10 million inhabitants. “In other words, a mortality rate of around 0.06%, practically the same as in Italy,” explains Ugo Bardi, professor at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Florence, who takes stock of the Swedish case on the Facebook page Pills of optimism. «The ratio between positive results and tests remains constant at around 1.3%, approximately the same value that we found in Italy. There are no problems even in terms of hospitalizations, ”writes Bardi.
Certainly there have been mistakes in Sweden too, as Tegnell himself admits: for example the lack of protection of nursing homes for the elderly, where the majority of the country’s Covid deaths were recorded. But overall, the light strategy worked. Strategy that was not to seek herd immunity, but to stop the epidemic so that it does not overwhelm the health system: Sweden, for example, has closed schools for people over 16 years old, banned gatherings with more than 50 people and asked those over 70 and groups at risk to isolate themselves, but instead of imposing all this by decree , recommended “, and trusted that its citizens will follow the advice and rules of prudence. They did it.
“The Swedes stayed at home as long as possible, as recommended,” continues Bardi. In the most difficult moments of the epidemic, in Sweden nobody sang from the balconies but the general atmosphere was very similar to that of Italy. No traffic, empty premises, few people around, distanceetc. Among other things, air transport within Sweden was practically eliminated during the emergency, although it was not prohibited. ‘ This in itself does not mean that the emergency shutdown It has been useless in Italy, a country where the epidemic has been going on for months without the health authorities noticing (and how this was possible is a problem we must address) and in which infections had already blown up the health system of one of the Regions, Lombardy, theoretically better equipped from this point of view.
But, as Walter Münchau writes in the Financial Times, we can draw many useful lessons from the Swedish road to the epidemic. The first is that There are valid alternatives to the tough Chinese-style blockade from which almost everyone has been inspired (Münchau defines “automatic blocking reflex” as “the greatest threat to Western capitalist democracies” at this time).
The second is that we must stop jumping to conclusions. ‘Now the new Swedish infection statistics are better than most of the EU. But we still shouldn’t draw any conclusions. Two months ago it was wrong to condemn the Swedish strategy based on these data, and it would be equally wrong to draw the opposite conclusion now. It will take time to understand, because the phenomenon is very complex and takes place over a medium-long period. Meanwhile, I add, the priority is to ensure that health systems are not overloaded. If there is something clear, it is that nobody wants another confinement: the cost, this time, would be intolerable at an economic, social and political level. So we must also be cautious.
This article originally appeared on Corriere Press Review, a service reserved for subscribers. Find it here.
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