Covid 19 coronavirus: fear that Sweden’s controversial tactic has failed

Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a strategy to suppress the virus that has proven more controversial than any other tactic: herd immunity.

Despite harsh criticism from experts and governments around the world, Sweden decided to follow this path to avoid blocking the economy.

The controversial approach meant that coronavirus cases and deaths in the country initially skyrocketed, but by July the daily figures had dropped sharply, and the country managed to keep infections and deaths low for months.

By mid-July, deaths were in record numbers, and the whole country was even better than Victoria.

There were several days in August when Sweden recorded double-digit case numbers, but the numbers rose a few weeks to September, and authorities struggled to understand why.

The number of daily cases has remained worryingly high since then, with more than 1,700 new cases registered last week.

The country’s capital Stockholm appears to be the epicenter of the surge in infections and health authorities revealed on Tuesday that the city had registered more than 1,200 new cases in just a few days.

Stockholm’s health chief Bjorn Eriksson said “the downward trend has been broken,” warning people not to act as if the virus is no longer in the community.

“The pandemic is still ongoing and I’m quite exasperated by people acting like this is over,” he said Tuesday.

“Everyone should help reduce transmission.”

Swedish authorities have continually opposed the introduction of restrictions or mandatory closures, opting to keep schools, retailers and restaurants open throughout the pandemic.

Wearing a mask is also optional for residents.

But now authorities are considering introducing restrictions to deal with this unexpected increase in cases.

“Stockholm has seen a clear increase recently, across all age groups,” Swedish state epidemiologist Dr Anders Tegnell, who has spearheaded the country’s response, told reporters.

“We are discussing with Stockholm if we need any additional possibility to take measures to reduce transmission.”

Tegnell said that experts were now finalizing any restrictions that might be necessary.

“We have a discussion with Stockholm about whether we need to introduce measures to reduce the spread of the infection,” he said.

“Exactly what it will be, we will return in the next few days.”

Sweden has recorded more than 90,000 Covid-19 cases and 5,878 deaths, with nearly half of the deaths occurring in Stockholm.

Just a few days ago, some health experts suggested that Sweden could have successfully achieved herd immunity and defeated the virus.

Biocomplexity professor at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Kim Sneppen, said the already built-in partial immunity could be enough to contain the spread.

“There is some evidence that the Swedes have developed some degree of immunity to the virus which, together with what they are doing to stop the spread, is enough to control the disease,” Sneppen told the Danish newspaper Politiken.

Before Sweden saw its latest spike in cases, another health expert said the drop in cases and deaths was a “vindication” of the country’s herd immunity strategy.

However, a study published in August found that Sweden had actually “failed” in its attempt to achieve herd immunity.

Swedish health authorities initially predicted that 40 percent of Stockholm’s population would have contracted the disease and acquired antibodies in May this year.

But the study, published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, found that at that time only about 15 percent of the population had been infected.

Along with this, research has shown that asymptomatic people or those with a mild infection are much less likely to develop long-lasting antibodies.

“It is clear that it is not only the rates of viral infection, hospitalization and mortality [per million population] much higher than those seen in neighboring Scandinavian countries, but also that the time course of the epidemic in Sweden is different, with continued persistence of increased infection and mortality well beyond the critical few weeks period seen in Denmark, Finland and Norway, “said researcher Dr. David Goldsmith, a retired doctor in London.

Former epidemiologist David Steadson said he was “disgusted” by Sweden’s approach to the pandemic.

Steadson, an Australian who currently lives two hours from Stockholm, spoke to news.com.au two weeks ago about the government’s decision to seek herd immunity.

“Allowing a deadly virus to spread in the hope of eventual ‘herd immunity’ made no sense to me scientifically, given our then limited knowledge, and it made no ethical sense to me,” he said.

“People would die unnecessarily and he was frankly disgusted with what he was hearing from the Swedish Public Health Authority.”