Swedish epidemiologist sidelined after country’s no-block rule spurs death toll

Sweden “loses faith” with its Covid expert as deaths rise.

An epidemiologist who led the no-block strategy appears to have been sidelined by his government.

The high-profile epidemiologist who led Sweden’s no-lock strategy in the spring appears to be being sidelined by his country’s government after his prediction that increased immunity would mean a lighter second wave turned out to be grossly wrong.

Anders Tegnell’s bi-weekly press conference was hidden Thursday by an overlay press conference headed by Stefan Lofven, Prime Minister of Sweden, where the scenarios prepared by the Public Health Agency were announced.

“There is certainly a divide, and I’m pretty sure that many in government have lost faith in the Public Health Agency,” said Nicholas Aylott, associate professor of politics at Stockholm’s Södertörn University.

“By some calculations, we now have exactly the same level of spread of the virus that we had in the spring, and that is as clear a refutation of Tegnell’s strategy as could be desired.”

Tegnell had always insisted that his Public Health Agency had never followed a herd immunity strategy, but repeatedly suggested in the summer that their counterparts in Norway, Finland, and Denmark would face a more difficult task during the winter due to lower levels of immunity in their populations. .

This month, however, the number of deaths in Sweden had started to rise again above that of its Nordic neighbors, with 630 deaths recorded as a result of Covid-19. That was roughly 10 times the per capita death rate than in Norway, where only 30 deaths from Covid-19 were recorded between October 28 and November 25.

The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control expects Sweden to exceed the peak death rates it suffered in April next month, with between 100 and 140 people projected to die from the virus each day.

Ewa Stenberg, a political commentator for the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, said the agency’s failure to predict the severity of the second wave had damaged his position.

“There is criticism against the Public Health Agency in the government for that and for its lack of rigor in its advice to the people,” he said.

Shaken by the worsening situation, the Swedish government has begun to take the lead, imposing a ban on the sale of alcohol after 10 p.m. and reducing the maximum public gathering allowed to eight people, a move that Lofven described as ” no equivalent in modern times. “

“In the spring, there was first a proposal from the Public Health Agency, but in these latest decisions, the government has made a proposal and then has asked the Public Health Agency to respond,” Stenberg said.

Both Tegnell and Lofven have denied that there has been a breach of trust. “All rumors about a rupture between the government and the agency are completely false. We have a very strong ongoing dialogue and a strong level of trust between us,” Tegnell said Thursday. Lofven echoed his comments in an interview with the Swedish newspaper Expressen.

“There is no rupture. I imagine that sometimes there may be a temptation in the media to portray the conflicts. But here there is none,” he said.

Swedish newspapers, however, have reported growing friction. “The division grows: how Tegnell lost its veto,” read the headline of the Sunday article in the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper.

An article in Expressen showed growing pessimism within the government, with an anonymous official telling a journalist that they feared the pandemic would continue for years, creating a “new normal.”

– By The Sunday Telegraph-Telegraph Media Group