Tegnell thinks a little flu explains high coronary heart disease. This is the response of the Norwegian experts.

Norwegian experts question Tegnell’s claim.

Sweden has had many more deaths per crown than neighboring countries.

The country has received praise and praise for its crown strategy, in which schools and businesses can remain open at all times.

Swedish infection control authorities have denied that the strategy is the cause of all the deaths. Instead, they have pointed out that the virus entered nursing homes due to failures in the care of the elderly.

New explanation

In an interview in Dagens Nyheter, state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell launches another explanation.

He points out that Sweden had little seasonal flu last winter and therefore there were very few deaths from flu.

Tegnell believes there is a link between low deaths from influenza and high deaths from corona. His point is that many sick older people, who would have otherwise been exposed during flu season, survived but died of corona.

Fewer deaths from influenza

– Now it has been seen that countries that have had a fairly low mortality rate from influenza in the last two or three years, such as Sweden, have a very high excess mortality rate in covid-19. While those who have had a high mortality from influenza in the last two years, such as Norway, have a fairly low mortality from covid. The same trend has been observed in several countries. This may not be the full explanation, but it is part of it, Tegnell tells Dagens Nyheter.

Tegnell refers, among other things, to an article by three George Mason University economists that suggests 16 different explanations for why Sweden has had a higher death rate. That fewer people in the risk group died in the flu season before the crown is one of them.

In Sweden, last winter there were 7,928 influenza infections and 178 deaths. This is less than half the figures for the winter of 2017/18, where more than 20,000 Swedes contracted the flu and 1,012 died.

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health detected more than 13,000 confirmed cases of influenza this winter, although many more had the disease. An estimated 900 die from influenza in Norway each year.

– An explanation

Rebecca Cox, professor and director of the University of Bergen influenza center, is in awe of Tegnell’s explanation.

It confirms that both the flu and the coronavirus affect the oldest and weakest. But she believes the explanation for the high death toll in Sweden lies elsewhere other than a mild flu season.

– I think it sounds like an excuse. We see this in several countries. If you don’t protect the elderly, they will die. Yes, it is conceivable that they will die from the flu, but we typically protect the elderly with the flu vaccine, Cox says.

That Sweden has recorded 5,860 deaths per crown while Norway has 265, Cox believes he has another explanation.

– They have ten times more deaths than Norway if you take into account that they have twice the population. The explanation is that the Swedes did not implement enough measures to protect their elderly. You have to compare what measures Norway and Sweden implemented to limit the spread of the infection, says Cox.

– No one mortal in Norway.

Chief Physician Siri Helene Hauge of the National Institute of Public Health says they are taking a closer look at influenza deaths in Norway in recent years.

– Preliminary estimates do not show a particularly high number of influenza-related deaths in recent years in Norway, Hauge writes in an email to Aftenposten.

Nor does he believe that “total mortality” shows a marked excess mortality in Norway compared to the Swedish figures.

Hauge believes that it is too early to conclude the cause of the high death rates in Sweden.

– This probably has several complex causes, but it is reasonable to believe that the main reason is that more older people were infected with COVID-19 in Sweden compared to Norway.

Several possible explanations

The three economists, Daniel Klein, Joakim Book and Christian Bjørnskov, who have written about the Nordic countries in search of an explanation for the differences, estimate that the lack of closure explains only 25 percent.

They believe that the situation in countries like the United Kingdom and Belgium shows that closure is not the answer. The other explanations they throw out are that Sweden has more immigrants, that they have been more exposed to the infection, that Stockholm is a larger and more populous city than Oslo and Copenhagen, that there were more Stockholm inhabitants in the Alps when the virus arrived, missing of protective equipment and number of weaknesses in the care of the elderly.

Sweden and Norway now have roughly the same infection pressure. The latest figures from the European Infection Control Agency show that Sweden has 29.4 infected by. 100,000 inhabitants in the last 14 days. Norway has 28.6 infected, which is also a “red” level according to the government’s own rules.