Stockholm – Sweden is one of the richest countries in the world, and when nations began to deal with the coronavirus Earlier this year, Swedes took a completely different approach to their neighbors. While other nations quickly imposed blockades, Sweden allowed people to continue living largely as normal.
Stores and restaurants have remained open throughout the pandemic, as have elementary and secondary schools.
However, the economy has still been seriously affected, and Sweden is now seen as a warning about the risks of allowing companies to reopen too soon.
The country’s death rate from coronavirus is now 30% higher than that of the United States, when adjusted for population size.
CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer went to Stockholm and found that despite the troubling statistics, most Swedes still seem quite relaxed.
Swedish health officials believed that some basic measurements, including limiting meetings to a maximum of 50 people, would control the spread of infections, along with Swedish common sense.
Stockholm residents whom Palmer met on the streets said they were trying to distance themselves socially, when possible, but that face covers are still a rarity. Taking a ride on the Stockholm subway, Palmer was the only one on the train wearing a mask.
But there is no doubt that Sweden’s “lockdown lite” has cost lives. One of them belonged to Helen Gluckman’s 80-year-old father, Jan.
“I was squeezing my hand when I was talking to him,” he told CBS News. “I think he heard me.”
When Jan tested positive for COVID-19, the nursing home where he lived did not send him to the hospital. The staff stopped monitoring her oxygen and gave her morphine. She died in a few days.
“They had no oxygen in the home, so there was nothing they could do or were doing, so I think it was better [for them] without knowing how bad his condition was. So they just gave him morphine, which kills a person after a while, “Gluckman said, adding that if she had known at the time that” morphine will kill you, because it takes your breath away, then she would never have accepted it. ” .
When asked by Palmer how health professionals could act in an apparently irresponsible way, essentially without treating a patient, Gluckman said the Stockholm authorities seemed to decide early on that they were “not going to treat this group of people.”
She said without hesitation that she had “lost faith in the government” and in Swedish public health authorities who have direct responsibility for determining the country’s coronavirus strategy.
STINA STJERNKVIST / TT News Agency / AFP / Getty
With the beginning of summer, the Swedish outbreak has finally slowed down. From a peak of more than 100 deaths per day, the country is now reporting daily death tolls for low teens.
But in a couple of months, when the short northern summer is over, people will return to the interior, where the virus could easily explode again. Swedish scientists have called for stricter and more data-based measures to prevent a resurgence.
However, the national director of public health, Karin Tegmark Wisell, told Palmer that to avoid a possible second wave of infections in the fall, Swedish officials would “stick to the recommendations” and continue to study the evolving research.
So basically, there are no imminent changes.
That alarms Nele Brusselaers, an epidemiologist at the world-renowned Karolinska Institutet medical research university in Stockholm.
“If there is a country in Europe where there will be a second peak, it will probably be Sweden, because they are not doing much to stop it yet,” he said.
Last month, Sweden’s prime minister announced an investigation into the government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, as polls began to show a drop in public confidence.
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