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Yesterday, Swedish state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell came out to the Swedish Dagens Nyheter and explained the high number of deaths from covid-19 in the neighboring country saying that Sweden experienced a very mild flu season in 2019.
Now, the Norwegian health authorities make it clear to Dagbladet that they do not buy that explanation.
After nearly 5,900 deaths, the death toll has recently held steady in Sweden, with few new cases.
However, the country has experienced many deaths in terms of population and is now 11th on earth on this disgusting list.
– Same trend
According to Tegnell, Sweden’s 2019 mild flu season resulted in the survival of many of the sick and frail, who would otherwise have died from the common seasonal flu. Instead, they died when the corona pandemic hit.
– If many people die from the flu in the winter, fewer people die in heat waves the following summer. In this case, it was Covid-19 that killed many, Tegnell says.
At the same time, Sweden’s state epidemiologist noted that countries such as Norway and Finland, which had a higher mortality rate from influenza during the last two winters, have had quite low mortality from covid.
– The same trend has been observed in several countries. This may not be the full explanation, but part of it, Tegnell says.
Siri Helene Hauge, chief physician at the National Institute of Public Health (NIPH), notes that mortality figures between countries have varied greatly and it is too early to conclude on the reasons for this.
Denies
– Regarding influenza deaths in recent years, FHI is working to analyze this in more detail now, but preliminary estimates do not show a particularly high number of influenza-related deaths in recent years in Norway, says Hauge.
Superior referred to the official Euromomo figures, where there was also no significant flu mortality in Norway in the last year compared to the Swedish figures.
– What could be the explanation for the high number of deaths from covid-19 in Sweden? We cannot conclude. 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, Hauge says.
As a prelude to Tegnell’s proposal yesterday, subject director Frode Forland at FHI told Swedish television on Wednesday that the reason for the low death rates from covid-19 in Norway is the rapid closure of the partnership.
– The whole community understood that it was serious, Forland said and elaborated:
– We have roughly the same death rate in nursing homes and nursing homes as in Sweden, 50-60 percent. If you keep the infection low in society as such, there will be fewer people dying in institutions.
– Many reasons
The Norwegian Health Directorate also indicates that they have doubts about Tegnell’s explanation for the high death toll in Sweden.
– There may be many reasons why some countries were hit harder than others when the pandemic hit Europe this winter. Norway was among the countries with the highest number of recorded cases of infection per capita at the end of March, with around 4,800 confirmed cases and more than 300 hospitalized patients, says deputy health director Espen Rostrup Nakstad and elaborates:
– We clearly see that other countries that had a large spread of the infection also had high mortality rates, with a fairly even distribution between the proportion of deaths inside and outside nursing homes and between different age groups. The relationship between the number of patients admitted to the hospital and the intensive care unit has also been very stable in all the countries with which we have been able to compare, says Nakstad.
In Sweden, however, Anders Tegnell receives partial support for his theory of high mortality rates.
Niklas Arnberg is a professor of virology and an expert on viral infections. He tells Aftonbladet that he hasn’t been able to study Tegnell’s theory in depth yet, but that it seems completely reasonable.
– A certain point
– If it is the case that during the last year or years we have had a low mortality rate from influenza compared to our neighboring countries, this may explain, at least in part, why Sweden has had a relatively high mortality rate in covid-19, says Arnberg.
The otherwise often critical researcher, Björn Olsen, also gives state epidemiologist Tegnell the right to his theory. At least in part.
– There is a certain point in that. If the flu in 2019 were mild, fewer of the elderly would die. There were probably several of this group who died during the most aggressive phase of covidpandemin, he writes in a text message to Aftonbladet.
On the other hand, Olsen does not believe that this explains the high death toll in Sweden compared to neighboring countries.
